Escapril 2019 day 13
Celestial bodies
In the system of the wildly spinning Gamma Cassiopeiae, in an eccentric orbit that luckily matches the brightness fluctuations of the star, there lie two dwarf planets orbiting each other. One, a barren world populated only by highly active rocks rolling down mountains almost taller than the planet itself, constantly raising just to fall back on themselves. The other, a smaller tomb world, dead flat, dead shaded, dead frozen, dead drifting, lifelessly carried by her companion, thrown around space, never touched while the other one collects or slingshots away any debris they stumble upon. A quiet, unhindered world, entirely dead, yet reassuringly peaceful.
Here, on this sombre rock, two creatures were dragging their mushy limbs across the dusty surface, muttering incoherently to each other as if they had just travelled several dozen light years in an instant. What they were unaware of is that, in fact, they had just travelled precisely five hundred and forty seven and a half light years over the course of a thousand seventy three years, a hundred and ninety three days, ten hours and forty eight minutes, placing their journey at an average speed of a hundred and fifty two thousand eight hundred and ninety four point one five four kilometres per second. Except they didn’t, they barely gained a little orbital velocity and haven’t aged a femtosecond, which is exactly why they were so utterly confused. Well, one of them was. The other one was more concerned about having a terrible headache and not feeling his insides in the right place.
For completeness’ sake here’s my entry for the very first #escapril, a little excerpt from something I’d been working on at the time.
#escapril2019 #escapril2019day13