#glimmeringbone

Most things are predictable, to a point.  Mostly the difference is in lucidity and blood.

Tonight --- tonight it sits heavy in them.

Temeraire thinks his first encounter in this place went fairly well, all things considered, but he’s nothing if not curious, and he needs to know more, right away- He needs to know where he is, and how to get back home, and where Laurence is, most of all. So he carefully tucks the odd beeping thing and the thing that says it’s a ‘train pass’ into the loose portion of his talon sheaths, where they will be held against his claws, and they bump unpleasantly but won’t be lost at least as he tucks himself into the elevator by curling himself up tightly, tucking his tail around his neck, and sends himself down towards the bottom.

The train is interesting- there are very nearly holes in the train pass from his claws, but it at least is still readable, and he hops on and then presses his entire faceplate to the window with intense fascination until it stops at the next station.

He doesn’t like it, the feeling of something moving under him so steadily and entirely unlike flying or being on a ship, but the view is more than worth it.

What’s more worth it is the water, and he hasn’t forgotten about Laurence at all, of course, but Laurence has always enjoyed seeing Temeraire happy, and it’s only a hop and a skip before he’s pushing himself up into the air, intending to flop directly into the water. Except.... except he doesn’t make it, and instead goes plowing into the sand as his wings give out only a few heavy flaps later, and he pops up quickly to inspect them, snorting his displeasure before trying again.

And again.

And his wings won’t hold him, as they’ve always held him, and he doesn’t understand it, so he keeps trying until he plows into the sand right at a person’s feet, nose catching on the end of her skirts before he quickly ducks his head and wriggles away, then pops up with another snort, tongue flicking into the air in an expression of pure frustration.

He catches a glimpse of her on the pier at first. His gaze lingers a moment, because she is stunning, though later he wonders if his intuition was somehow at work as well. The people at this place (the Sea of Nectar?) have so many varied and outlandish outfits that hers should hardly stand out, but somehow it seems the closest to familiar.

Of course, that's only a moment. Alyosha looks away, and the woman passes by. He's distracted by exhaustion and pain and the light tablet he now knows is called a holophone, so when he decides finally to try and make his way back to his floor, he doesn't see that at some point she had passed by again. He doesn't see even as he passes into the strange room that moves between floors instead of stairs. It is not until he looks up to press the correct number that he sees her there.

"Oh! Excuse me," he says.

He looks around himself. There is clearly enough room for multiple people. Then he looks back to the woman.

The sound of waves in the distance is both a comfort and a weight at her throat, an discomforting mix of home/not home. Jaina lingers by the station, restless and anxious, taking in the strange inhabitants of this place as they go about their business, cheerful crowing and cawing and colorful plumage and a staggering lack of guards or visible weapons. There was a war going on, before she was pulled into the dead lands — somehow it’s this that feels the strangest since waking up here. That carelessness, this lack of tension. The only heaviness in the air here are the thunderstorms roiling on the horizon.

She doesn’t trust it for a moment. But if she stops too long to think her thoughts twist and gnaw onto themselves like writhing serpents, and so she makes herself step forward, past buildings made of glass, onto paths drawn in the sand. But something catches her eye: another woman, tall and stark against the cloudy skies. Part of Jaina, raw and tired and wild, wants only to hide, but she needs information, she needs to know more about this place and the people in it.

THE ONLY LIMIT IS PSYCHOLOGICAL. PSYCHOLOGICAL SIDE EFFECTS OF REPEATED DEATHS ARE UNKNOWN AND BEYOND THE RESPONSIBILITY OF THE ARK ADMINISTRATION.

It goes like this for you. You wake up in an unfriendly house in an unfriendly city and you leave. The streets twist and wind but you know that if you track the sun through the sky and never let yourself be distracted by the skittering of clawed feet or shadows in the doorways you will make it out to somewhere else. And you do--you make it to the indistinct edge of a sealed dome and to a train, which you have heard about once from Samot, talking about what the City of First Light turned into after he was chased away.

It takes you to a sea, waves lapping gently against sand, a horizon dotted with summer islands. You stand there for a moment on the shore, statue-still, and you are a breath away from letting it get to you before you see someone else. Dark skin, pearls in a chain at her throat, and something about her that draws you in (something familiar, something aching).

Good evening, Adelaide, it is a delight to hear from you!

A planet is a large, celestial body several important characteristics which distinguish it from the rest.

Firstly, it must orbit a star! This can be a living star, a dying star, or even a dead star (such as a black hole, or neutron star). 

Secondly, it must have enough mass that it becomes round. It does not need to be perfectly smooth — many planets have mountains tall and canyons deep. It must, however, be round enough that the general shape is round, not chunky or oblong.

Thirdly, it cannot be a satellite of another object. This means that a moon cannot be a planet, and vice versa.

Finally, it must have cleared all other objects from its orbital path, such as asteroids and various other types of space debris.