( hitch your wagon to a star )

[bottecellie]

the stargazing meme

oo1. comment with your characters
make sure to put names, series, & preferences somewhere!
you can use < ! > sans the spaces to make the comment "blank"
oo2. reply to others in character
oo3. use the rng and enter 1-10
oo4. play out what happens -- anything goes!
oo5. profit? oh yeah!

prompts

one → meteor shower you just saw a falling star! and another! make a wish!
two → aliens what was that? was that really? omg no way a ufo!
three → lunar eclipse you've been sitting out for hours, waiting for this. it's so cool!
four → comet does it move fast or slow? either way, it's amazing.
five → full moon the moon is so huge! just don't look too long, it's really bright too.
six → star dust anything can happen in space. make up your own plot!
seven → solar eclipse this might be happening in the middle of the day!
eight → planet sighting is that a new star? nope, just a neighbor in the solar system!
nine → constellations do you know the stories behind these odd patterns?
ten → deep space normal stargazing isn't that much fun. you got a telescope!

taken from here.

Comments

[candothat]

[Fortunately, Chekov is used to being ignored when he talks. He pokes Korra's side to be sure that he has her attention.]

Constellations. [Maybe that's not a word in her world.] Eh... a formation of stars that are assigned an arbitrary image?

[anatural]

[She squirms a little.]

Yeah, we do. [She doesn't really remember most of the stories, though.] What about you?

[candothat]

Are any of them good?

[Oh no, Korra. Was that an invitation to talk?] Yes! Twenty-two of them--but that refers to areas of the sky. My two favorites are the Virgo Constellation and the Pisces Constellation, although I think I prefer Virgo. Both are unique because they contain the only two points in the sky where the ecliptic intersects with the celestial equator, but I like Virgo's story--the story of the image formed by stars, not that part of the sky.

[Before launching into a detailed account of said story, he pokes Korra more insistently.]

Do you have a favorite?

[anatural]

[If you're not careful, sir, she's totally going to thwack your wrist. And it'll probably hurt, because she doesn't pull punches.

But she's grinning. Even while he babbles and makes her head spin.]

Do you know about the spirit of the moon?

[candothat]

[Nope, no more poking--not if Korra's going to say something interesting. There is only listening going on here.]

I have never heard of such a spirit.

[anatural]

[She's not by nature a storyteller, and it's hard to judge how much detail she needs to include for him.]

Thousands of years ago, the spirits of of the moon and the ocean left the spirit world in order to help people. They took the form of two koi fish and created the Spirit Oasis in the North Pole. They circle each other each other in an eternal dance, pushing and pulling like the tides.

During the Hundred Year's War, the Fire Nation tried to destroy all waterbenders. We [it comes out before she can think, and she tries to ignore the sting] get our strength from the moon.

General Zhao decided the best way to win was to destroy the moon itself. He invaded the Northern Water Tribe and killed Tui, the spirit of the moon.

The Northern Water Tribe had a princess -- Princess Yue. She had been born sick, but her parents had taken her to the oasis and Tui had saved her life.

When Tui died, all the color left the world. Avatar Aang channeled the spirits of his past lives to defeat Zhao's army, but he couldn't save Tui, which was the only way to restore balance to the world.

But Princess Yue realized that because Tui had saved her, she had a piece of Tui's spirit inside of her. She could save the moon by taking Tui's place, but it would mean giving up her life as a human.

[Her voice became a little choked. Master Katara had told her this story so many times, ever since she was a little girl, so that Korra felt like she knew Yue personally. She had always felt like the moon was looking out for her.]

She did it. Without a second thought. She saved the world when even the Avatar couldn't.

[She wondered if Yue was connected to this moon too, and if she was still looking down on her.]

[candothat]

[At some point during the story, Chekov sits up and gives Korra his full attention. It's slightly difficult to follow since he doesn't know anything about the history and mythology (or are the two the same thing?) of her world, but not impossible.]

She saved the world by becoming a fish?

[This isn't said skeptically! He's just making sure he has this right. It's obviously a very important story.]

[anatural]

[Korra turns her head and just...looks at him. She doesn't even know what to say. She just told him one of the most important stories in her culture, and that is what he got out of it?]

I...guess you could put it that way?

[candothat]

[He doesn't understand what he did to warrant that look. He was even careful not to question a worldview that implies that koi are somehow connected to gravity!]

That is very noble. I would have misgivings about becoming a fish--even an immortal one with a connection to the spirit world.

[anatural]

[There are times when she almost hates him. He makes her feel so stupid sometimes, babbling about his science stuff, and he makes her feel so small when she tries to talk about her world. He doesn't have to outright question her. She can tell by the tone of his voice that he's just indulging her ignorant superstition, and she feels helpless in the face of it. She's too spiritually stupid to make him understand.

She sits up and wraps her arms around her knees, not angry enough for a fight, but no longer comfortable enough to remain in such a vulnerable position. Her tone is perhaps a little sullen.]

What abou your story? Virgo or whatever it was.

[candothat]

[Chekov isn't the most emotionally perceptive of individuals, but he can tell when he has upset someone. That's not something that he can just let stand... not that he knows what to say to fix it, especially with Korra. Her culture is so alien.]

Virgo? That is just a story, it's not important.

[He takes a deep breath and prepares to do something that he's not all that good at: admitting that he doesn't know something.]

I think I misunderstood what you meant about the moon spirit.

[anatural]

[She looks at him from the corner of her eye, and lets out a little sigh.]

I know you don't believe me.

[candothat]

That is not-- [True? No, it's completely true.]

It really happened?

[anatural]

Yes! I was there! ...sort of.

[She's not really up to getting into the whole "past lives" thing with him.]

Master Katara, my waterbending teacher, was there.

[candothat]

You were? She was?

[No--nononono. Questioning Korra is the second least intelligent thing to do now (the first least intelligent thing would be to take another stab at paraphrasing what she says).]

Ay, forget that. I believe you. [He flops back down to look back at the sky.] Where I am from, all of the stories are just stories. No one thinks that the constellations are ancient gods and goddesses or that the moon is the wife of the earth god any more then I think that Baba Yaga is going to come out of the woods in her chicken-footed house right now. It is different where you are from.

[anatural]

[She rolls over, resting her chin on her arms and looking at him.]

Why don't you believe them?

[candothat]

Because I know that the universe I live in operates according to the laws of physics, not the laws of gods.

[It sounds so cold and clinical, that worldview. No gods or spirits, just scientific evidence and, in the last several centuries, mathematics.]

I know that the stars I can see from home don't appear as they do because of anything other than happenstance and, once off of Earth, their appearances change altogether. And the moon? Nothing more than a lifeless satellite that was caught in Earth's orbit early in the planet's formation.

[anatural]

[Korra looks back up at the moon, and wonders if it has a spirit, or if it is one of Chekov's lifeless rocks.]

That sounds so lonely.

[She's not a very spiritual person; she can't connect with the spirit world the way the Avatar is supposed to. Spirits are shy; they require a stillness of mind and spirit that she can never seem to achieve. She's too physical, can't stop herself from moving.

But she can still feel them, especially the moon, which lends her strength to all waterbenders. She knows they're there, even if she can't see them, in the same way she knows that her parents are there and love her even when she's thousands of miles away. The idea of a world without them seems almost painfully empty.]

[candothat]

It is, a little.

[Spirituality isn't something that is typically found among Terran scientists of the twenty-third century. There is no way to prove that spirits exist. They can't be quantified and, more importantly, they are unnecessary. Natural phenomena can be explained without resorting to supernatural explanations.

That doesn't mean that the universe is dead. Maybe it isn't animated with spirits, but there's an elegance to a world explained by facts and numbers. Science tells a story about death and rebirth and interconnectedness and stardust; mathematics is the language of nature itself, and there's a deep and abiding beauty in that language. The Fibonacci sequence can be found in the spiral of a pine cone. The Mandelbrot set can capture the delicate crystalline structure of a snowflake or the glint of a diamond.

There's a stunning symmetry to all of existence that can only be captured in numbers, but Chekov isn't nearly eloquent enough to explain any of this to Korra.]

But it is very beautiful in its way.

[anatural]

[Mathematics and spirituality aren't incompatible, any more than spirits are incompatible with any language. It's too bad neither of them have the words to explain.]

I believe you.

[She does. She may not get it. She may not agree. But she's seen the way he lights up when he talks about it. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.]