#darisa

639 words | Original Work: Darisa's story, a spin off from Tortured Prince (AU of TR3 lmao). Just an introduction to the little mink that is Baltar's daughter

Darisa quietly turned the handle to the king's study, peeking her head through the door. The king's pen hovered slightly above the desk as he looked up at her.

"Good morning, Darisa," Uncle Hakon greeted.

She hurried furtively into the room, shutting the door softly behind her. Slinking along the perimeter of the room, she checked behind the tapestry before getting to the window. Wood creaked as Uncle Hakon twisted to watch her. Darisa leaned out, closing the shutters, then pulled the curtains tight.

"And what are you up to?" the king wondered.

Confident that the room was secure, Darisa scurried back to the front of the desk, pulling up one of the chairs and clambering onto it so as to kneel on it and be at eye level with her uncle.

"Uncle Hakon," she said in low tones, placing her hands flat on the desk. "I come to you seeking elusive information."

Her uncle laughed, docking his pen and folding his hands. "Alright, Bug," he said. "What's your question?"

She leaned in close, conspiratorially. "What's... sex?"

Blinking in surprise, expression becoming more reserved, Uncle Hakon leaned back. "That's uh, you're too young to be talking about that."

Ugh, not him too! So it wasn't a secret, only an adult secret. Why were they so weird about words sometimes? Darisa scowled. Clearly, it was time to stop playing around, or she would never get answers around here.

"Okay," she said innocently, hopping off the chair. "I'll go ask Aunty Rohisa."

Uncle Hakon lurched forward in his seat, "Wait!"

Darisa stopped, smug, and waited for him to continue.

Eyeing her, he sighed in exasperation as he shook a finger at her. "That won't work every time."

Biting her lower lip to try and keep from grinning, Darisa nodded. "Mmhmm."

"Sit down," he said, rubbing his forehead. "Let me think."

Darisa settled into the chair again and watched him, kicking her feet.

The king whetted a lip. "Well," he started slowly. "It's something very private." He paused. "Where did you hear about it?"

"Hobar was making fun of us for not knowing what it was," she said, rolling her eyes. She bet he didn't know what it was, either.

"Hobar is the one that likes picking on Todaro, right?" Uncle Hakon asked, and Darisa nodded. "I see." He tapped his fingers on the desk a few times, then sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. "Sex is what makes babies."

Darisa frowned, deflating. "Oh." Who cared about babies? "That's all?"

"Sort of," he said. "For... most people, it's very fun to do, whether or not they get a baby because of it."

That piqued her attention. It wasn't just a thing, but an act, and a fun one at that! "How do you do it?"

Uncle Hakon blew out a breath. "You'll have to ask your mother or aunts about specifics. Definitely not your papa though, okay?"

Darisa cocked her head. "Why not papa?"

He hesitated and glanced away. "It's better for girls to talk to girls about it."

Squinting at him, Darisa tried to tell if he was lying. Papa was something else adults tended to get weird about, and Uncle Hakon was no exception. But even if he was lying, she probably wouldn't be able to wrestle the whole truth from him.

She relented. "So I should talk to Aunty Rohisa after all?"

Uncle Hakon looked like he'd bit into something a little sour. "Aunty Rohisa can sometimes give a few too many details. Your mother might like it if you asked her first."

"Hmm." She considered the information she'd gathered, then nodded and hopped down. "Okay. Thanks, Uncle Hakon!"

"Of course," he said. "Now shoo, little bug. Love you."

"Love you!" she answered as she darted from the room, already on the hunt for her next victim.

I’ll take this one. 

Darisa (the Kukun’lu’s home planet) orbits a class M red dwarf star. While the spectra is different (obviously a bit redder than our sun Sol, which is class G2V), the pure light from it is what a kukun would perceive as “white” light. It can be split into four colors that they are able to perceive directly, but there is not inherently more information there than there would otherwise be.

Human eyes have reactive cells which respond to light within three specific wavelength bands, red, green, and blue*. This makes up light which is visible to us. That this spectrum of light is divided into 3 bands does not give any special status to those bands. It could be divided into only 2, or into many more. The spectrum of visible light to humans has a wavelength of ~390 to 700 nanometers.

The kukun’lu “white” is a combination of all the wavelengths within a spectrum that is slightly redder, as Cikil (their sun) emits light in a redder spectrum. Light visible light to a kukun is made up of wavelengths ~500 - 900nm. Their spectrum is a bit wider than that of humans, and in general, Darisa fauna sees in this larger spectrum. This is because light at this wavelength is less energetic, and a wider range is very useful. Additionally, they have cones (or their equivalent type of cell) which detect light in 4 bands within this spectrum rather than the human 3. Most life on Darisa featuring photosynthesis would appear black to a human, as it would absorb the whole of the higher energy spectrum in a situation where high energy photons are scarcer.

As for placing the story within time… While I’ve definitely established that everything in the story is in our galaxy, red dwarf stars can by some estimates maintain habitable zones of orbit (”goldilocks zones”) for trillions of years. Well beyond any main sequence stars. That having been said… main sequence stars are still visible in Darisa’s night sky. So the setting is still limited to at most 80 or 90 billions years in the future, and possibly as long ago as 3 billion years back.

That having been said... I drop clues now and then. There’s absolutely a location/timeframe that I have in mind. Just from this post, I’ve filled in some more details. :3

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/58157872/a-darisa-tarot-the-lomisht

Like the title says, I’ve just launched the kickstarter for the Tarot deck which Karen and I are working on! All of the cards that I have been posting here are a part of this deck, and its been what she and I have been planning/creating for the last year or so.

The Lomisht is a tarot deck set behind an old pantheon in the world of Darisa. It’s full of images and symbols both specific to that setting, and which tie directly to the tradition of tarot here on earth. The deck comes with a digital book I am working on which explains the deck, its symbols, relation to traditional tarot cards, and a lot of information about the world the deck comes from!

I don’t normally ask for reblogs, but if anyone is willing to signal boost this, I would be really appreciative! I really want to be able to see this project take off and share it with as many people as I can!

Darisa:

[Text ➼ Queen Bitch] Yet you text me to tell me that you hate me?

[Text ➼ Queen Bitch] Fun fact: I don’t give a shit if you hate me, princess.

Lots of questions! I’ll answer as best as I can, but that really covers a lot of ground.

There are lots and lots of cultures on Darisa, the same as on your world. Some of them are regional, but some of them are scattered all over the world, yet retain solidarity. They tend to follow language pretty closely, but I think that makes sense. You tend to communicate traditions with people who you’re able to talk to most easily. There are trends in cultures overall, but I can’t think of any absolutes that are 100% true across all of our cultures.

As for celebrations? Eesh, that’s even harder. Even within single cultures, there can be different celebrations and festivals that happen. Most countries celebrate the day that they were founded (mine’s no exception).

My parent is a member of the Siasha religion and raised me that way (which I kind of believe in a non-literal way), so I have always celebrated those holidays. My favorite has always been the festival of Sha. That takes place based on the position of the moons relative to Cikil, our sun, so it can happen more than once in a year, or not at all in s number of consecutive years. It is celebrated whenever KurDod, the smaller of the two moons, eclipses Kur, the larger, perfectly. KurDod is much smaller, so this places it in the center of a larger moon. In addition to this, the sun must be fully set, and the moons in a waning phase, so it looks like one crescent is being nestled into another.