The music of the spheres

"It would be nice if [the enlightened bishops and theologians who support the theory of evolution] put a bit more effort into combating the anti-scientific nonsense that they deplore. All too many preachers, while agreeing that evolution is true and Adam and Eve never existed, will then blithely go into the pulpit and make some moral or theological point about Adam and Eve in their sermons without once mentioning that, of course, Adam and Eve never actually existed! If challenged, they will protest that they intended a purely "symbolic" meaning, perhaps something to do with "original sin", or the virtues of innocence. They may add witheringly that, obviously, nobody could be so foolish as to take their words literally. But do their congregations know that? How is the person in the pew, or on the prayer-mat, supposed to know which bits of scripture to take literally, which symbolically? Is it really easy for an uneducated churchgoer to guess?

Think about it, Bishop. Be careful, Vicar. Shouldn't you take greater care, when speaking in public, to let your yea be yea and your nay be nay?"

Hmm, how to begin.

First she looked at it in astonishment. Then... well, why not? It was his right, and Olympus is long gone. She keeps the handwritten letter short and to the point and sends it back immediately.

Congratulations, Father. I am afraid I shall not be in attendance, yet your starry-eyed daughter wishes you and your spouse all the happiness you deserve, as always. Praised be the Lords Thunderer and Earthshaker!

Love,
Urania.

Mary, sweetest girl, I can't recall making this particular charge on my credit card. Care to elaborate?¹


1. Read as, "what do you have to say in your defense?" Heed: your reply will dictate how much of an head start you get before I sic the horse on you.

Some time in the next week, something truly tragic (!) will happen at the house.

(Hey, no one said predictions have to be something unexpected.)

The same old song and dance: writing is hard, woe. And thus I resort to drabbles. I know I still have a giant pile of these to write, but... give me more? Brainstorm with me? Harass me to write them instead of just begging for more?

There must be prompts for the skink, you guys. I don't even, but there must.

"Hi radiation, hi temp, hi pressure, hi acid, & arsenic kills humans. But doesn't mean microbes can't do the back-stroke in it." -- Neil deGrasse Tyson


Felisa Wolfe-Simon reports: The bacteria GFAJ-1, native to Mono Lake, California, can substitute arsenic for phosphorus in its cell components, including DNA, RNA and ATP.

Star Trek once brought forth fictional beings with silicon replacing carbon in their organisms. For all purposes, this is exactly the same thing. Phosphorus is as essential to life as we know it (as we know it) as carbon is, and this microbe has managed to do what was long thought impossible. While this is not proof that extraterrestrial life exists, nor does it mean that GFAJ-1 is unable to use phosphorus at all; however, in an ambient rich in arsenic, with no phosphorus presence, the studied bacteria thrives and reproduces without successfully. It is the first time that one of the Big Six components is successfully replaced with another element in a living organism.

Science never sleeps.

[private; visible to Apollo, Melpomene, Cricket]

Nine broken, Nine torn. Memory forgets, and gives thanks when there is none. My distance has cause now as it once did; too much is gone, too much has died. We wither. I will not take part in this cruel parody of who we once were, for my songs and breath are mine alone, and time keeps remembrance better than the ones remembered.

[/private]

[locked from Aphrodite and Erotes]

Conniving, cold, lying whore. It is altogether too easy to say so, when winter comes and the Iron Queen rules in the Underworld, is it not?

[/locked]

It is the lies that do it. When she tells him about them (ever the fool, she should have learned centuries ago), about a group of sisters, about their mother, about one sister that broke all ties and broke them all (no names, though, for no hands clap for belief), he spins a tale about his own kin. The details she forgets, immediately, for she has no room for falsehood. But the starlight dims, and in the morning he leaves. She dos not explain - fickleness of inspiration, born with her; why ought she explain her own nature? - and he knows not to ask questions.

She could have gone west, again. Yet that would be just another cycle, and between the two, she chooses silence. So Urania drops the key on her landlord's mailbox and drives back east. Halfway to New York, she turns on her cellphone. Hello, world.

The loudest noises may deafen out star-sound. Probably not, but there are ties that bind and pull.


It is a strange thing, to search for silence in crowds and bright lights.

Perhaps it is too late. Perhaps not. She could lose herself in the calculations and reach no conclusion. Time wasted - a sure recipe for "too late".

Urania dreams. The door is left open, so that the nightmares do not have to knock before coming in.

Eight blank pages in her notebook, then:

Ambivalence. When art meets science you have philosophy. When man meets science your gods die.

Redundancy. Myths are instruments through which we understand the world. Ignorance is bliss.

Obsolescence. Our swan song through one last look at the sky. Because paradise is truly lost, and inspiration calls for dreamers.

Clap your hands or forever hold your peace.

Patrons of knowledge and the arts, and yet they seem to have more trouble learning than most. Perhaps it's the habit, perhaps it's pride, perhaps it's that they are too faded already to accept that things can change. The world shifts and spins and in the end they stay the same.

And so different. Cracked. They try to ignore it, forsake the ache gnawing at their hearts - but the Nine are broken, torn asunder as if by the lightning of their own father the Thunderer. Urania would weep, but her tears have dried many moons ago. She no longer weeps for her favorites, and will not do so for her crumbling family. Distance is healthier, even if she grows weaker day by day, with no one to inspire out here. Perhaps it is the best way to go, silent, alone. No more pain.

( Letter to Melpomene )

Urania observes. For now, Reason keeps her counsel. She is too opposite from Tragedy, emotion that she is, that she will be able to offer soothing words and actions.

The Summer Triangle will shine bright at sunset, but the light of Deneb, Altair and Vega gives no comforting warmth from the chill. West, Mercury and Venus dip after the sun after the sliver of the moon, followed by the Crater hiding behind the world. Crimson Mars and great Saturn follow. She is not a fool; she will not try to read the meaning, not tonight.

How does that parse? "Copying Catwoxtwo?"

This will probably take a long time to complete, given my tendency to leave stuff halfway done.

Feel free to request as many or as few prompts as you wish; I'm terrible with prompts myself, and can spend a long time just picking a character or pairing, so you'd do me a kindness by filling that in for me. I can't guarantee speedy writing, though.

If a prompt hasn't been filled yet but I've assigned character(s) to it already, feel free to suggest other options.


Completed prompts: 50/500 (112)

Character breakdown:

• Aether (shining_blue): 6/500 (12)
  
• Cassandra (thehorseisalie): 4/500 (15)
  
• Coatlicue (writhing_snakes): 4/500 (2)
  
• Ereshkigal (no_linen_shroud): 3/500 (9)
  
• Goth (night_creature): 3/500 (4)
  
• Lady of the Lake (in_the_mere): 2/500 (6)
  
• Larisa (itickle): 3/500 (8)
  
• Pandora (all_giving): 1/500 (6)
  
• Peer Pressure (followtherules): 0/500 (4)
  
• Rosier (vermillion_rose): 6/500 (5)
  
• Skadi (snowshoes): 5/500 (3)
  
• Sleipnir (atta_leggr): 1/500
  
• Styx (stygos): 8/500 (22)
  
• Urania (star_cloak): 5/500 (4)
  
  
• Namtar (NPC, no_linen_shroud): 0/500 (3)
  
• Ladon (NPC, writhing_snakes): 0/500 (1)
  
• Lupa (NPC, in_the_mere): 0/500 (1)
  
• Phaethon (NPC, star_cloak): 0/500

( Featuring also )

Last updated: Dec 15th

( Prompts time. )

Written in her notebook.

The libations tarry, and thus the crow shall never drink from the bowl. But the hydra sleeps in the darkness while her master walks the dread halls, and the bird gorges himself in water from the cup.

The father waits for the sacrifice, but the son is not hurried. Soon there shall be no water to pour, and no honor either. The fig is eaten, and the water drunk, and with no rasp in his voice the crow shall sing again.


All unseen North, they dwell in Tartarus and will never be cleansed in Okeanos.

Written in her notebook. The previous night's sketches are scrapped.

Town early today, read headlines. Blackout at midday four days ago. (Did not know? How?) Did not buy the newspaper.

Do not care. Apply reason and return to work. Redo images with higher resolution.

Written in her notebook, below a series of sketches of the previous night's observations.

0.671 illuminated fraction at midnight. Detail on terminator above.

Venus in Taurus, between Alnath and the Pleiades, after sunset. Mars between Cancer and Leo, southwest at sunset. Saturn in Virgo, by Denebola. Auriga bright in west tonight, and Sirius rising.

Wait. Linger?

Urania has taken residence to the west of Nowhere Town. She rented a small cottage several miles away from the village and walked the last mile to it. She left her disconnected cellphone in the car, as well as her laptop and several other gadgets.

The house is small, but it has all she needs to live in. She makes the kitchen her workshop, charts and maps strewn across the large wooden table when she is not eating. There is a cold draft in the single bedroom, since the edges of the window don't meet the wall perfectly, but a blanket drawn over it keeps most of the cold out.

Once a week, she goes down to her car to drive to the town, where she buys groceries and checks the newspaper headlines. Her cellphone is connected for about an hour, enough to check voice mail and take any incoming calls (though she does not reply to messages or make calls of her own). Shopping completed, she returns to the house and ( isolation for the week. )

Urania has had enough with the behavior of her sisters. Her mother's return only emphasizes what she longs for the most: solitude, distance from her kin. And while the Muse would like to visit with Crius and Astraios to reminisce over times long dead (the skies never die and they have been watching a very long time), their company would probably serve to show how stupidly her own family is acting.

Friday morning, she hands in her resignation at school. No two weeks notice for this one. Stella Dranias apologizes to the principal and starts back to her apartment.

A block from home, she is almost run over by a car as it leaves a private residence, and yells in shrieked fury at the stunned driver. When the man is near to bolting in fear, she suddenly drops the matter and stalks away.

The travel bag is packed without the care she usually displays. It doesn't matter much what she takes, just that she gets out.

Before midday, she is already fifty miles to the west of New York City.

My sisters are blustering idiots, for they do not recognize reason even when it is right in front of their delicate noses.

Neutrality. I do not trust the word means something to you, blind that you are; in the last few hours, you have forgotten who you are and who you were meant to be.

Sanity is overrated? What fools. This is an age of science, of reason. If we do not hold ourselves high and righteous, no one shall do so for us.

We are the Muses. We created the letters. We gave birth to the stories. The next time you so lightly throw it away for bantering words like a blundering halfwit, stop. Think of whose name you are disgracing, Daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne. Fail that, and you fail yourselves. You may as well break your lyre, burn your scroll or throw away your mask, irresponsible children.

Just stay away. I do not desire to be in the presence of any of you when you are obviously seized by such insanity. You are pitiful specters of the sisters I loved.