#lunamara project

LUNAMARA 🌓 GOOD MORNING

The second comic preview to the Lunamara Project. As always, stay tuned for the main event.

More from LUNAMARA:

Fragments: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9]

Comics: [Good Night] [Good Morning]

[Click here for larger size and non-tumblr'd quality]

Pg. 2-4 Authored by Avellana Corylus

Celebrating 4000 years of AVE! Publications, we are honoured to have the assistance of famous fashionista and heir to the Lux brand name, Aurelia Lux to walk us through four monumental centuries of fashion, from the Lunar Migration to the Platinum Age to the Post-War period. It has been a time of much change from the era of our great, great grandparents, one of cultural exchange, social upheaval, and fashion from the properly practical to the retrospectively ridiculous. We are also delighted to host Felix Cygnus' latest shots wearing various historical recreations, and even some vintage pieces from the Lux vaults!

First, The Lunar Migration. As our ancestors crossed the stars to reach our home, some practical considerations had to be taken in hand when it came to designing clothing. While the lack of gravity in deep space would at first seem enticing for the safety it offers, it only means that sudden stops are more dangerous for snap-points. This lead to a fashion of inflated, flexible joints around ankles, wrists, necks, and even on the sides of the head. These were achieved either through padding, or more commonly through magical air buffers. The materials used to make these clothes are, these days, prohibitively expensive to make, as the resources required are hardly as common on the Surface or on Luna. Studying legacy garments, Aurelia Lux has here presented us with beautiful recreations that are as close to the originals as is possible with current provisions.

🌗

More from LUNAMARA:

Fragments: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9]

Comics: [Good Night] [Good Morning]

🦢

“A little to the left… no, no, the other left,” Felix tilts his head, squinting. “No, too far. Back to the first left.”

“How are you half a century older than me but don’t know your left from your right?” Rufus grumbles, adjusting the picture on the wall again. He steps back and checks his work, and then walks away before Felix can annoy him by asking for more adjustments. “That’s the last thing in the living room box.”

“Thanks again for this, Rufie,” Felix says, tottering after his superior and out of the living-dining room. He really does think it looks nice, though for the sake of Rufus’ patience, he’ll wait until after he’s gone home to tweak things a bit. 

“Cassius Corvus has informed me that you are prone to ‘chipping a dainty little finger’ if you’re not supervised while doing heavy lifting tasks,” Rufus replies, with a bit of heat, probably from the unwanted nickname. He strides down the hallway to the bedroom ahead of Felix. “And I owe him a favour, so.”

“Aw, I thought you were here because you wanted to help me unpack out of the kindness of your heart!” Felix trails behind him, skipping a little. “And hold on, how long have you and Cas gotten along?”

“Since we found we could commiserate over having to look after both you and the Princess,” Rufus glowers at him over his shoulder. He nearly walks into a low ceiling beam by doing so, and dodges at the last moment. “Why in Luna’s name are you so obsessed with these low ceiling apartment designs?”

“It’s cozy! I save on the heating bill! I would think that someone as energy efficient as you would appreciate that!”

“You are going to crack your head open on one of these and then all will be able to see what I suspected for the past century: that it’s empty!” 

“At least when they’re this low you can reach to hang the ceiling decorations– woah!” 

Felix is proud of himself for dodging the slipper that Rufus just threw at him. It was, luckily, the first thing he happened to grab out of the box labeled ‘bedroom’, rather than the ornamental globe, or the lamp. That might have been a greater test of Felix’s reflexes. 

“I can leave you to do this yourself and if you chip then that’s your problem.”

“No sir, pwease sir, not my delicate widdle fingies! Pwease, merciful Lowd Canis!”

The look that Rufus gives him could, as the humans used to say, sour milk. 

“Never speak like that again.”

“Yessir.”

Rufus turns back towards the box, and drags it further towards the center of the room. The nicknacks inside are practically overflowing, and it’s only one of three fairly large containers Felix has shoved his entire bedroom into. He did have to sleep here last night, so the bed is made up, but it looks a little sad and lonely without its dozen throw-pillows and blankets to drape here and there. Rufus starts taking out these things and looks more and more aghast at how many there are. 

“You do know that your family crest is not an excuse to start actually nest building, yeah?” he says, holding out a particularly obnoxiously coloured pillow. It’s bright pink, and fluffy, and shaped like a heart. Felix plucks it out of Rufus’ hands and hugs it to his chest.

“The Cygnus family does not hold a monopoly on enjoying comfortable living! But we are very good at it,” he places the heart pillow directly in the middle of the large pile against the headboard of the king size bed. “I like collecting these sorts of things. They make my home feel like my home no matter how many times I move!”

“If you just stayed in the palace you wouldn’t have to move at all,” Rufus fires back, taking out a jewellery box and showing quite a sweet amount of care in delicately placing it on the dresser. “You know the Princess would be delighted. And Cassius would be relieved. And I wouldn’t have to deal with your stupid excuses for being late to the office.”

“But unlike you, I like to keep this mythical thing called a ~work-life balance~,” Felix wiggles his fingers and releases a light sparkle into the air. Rufus looks disgusted at him for wasting magic for dramatic effect. “Which is much harder to do if I live in the same building where I work.”

“Seems to work fine for the royals.”

“Ah, but as you have likely seen from existing in the proximity of the palace and around some extremely stressed out royalty, it really doesn’t,” Felix counters, dusting off a small mirror and setting it to one side. “And I am not a royal, so I’m not obligated to put myself under that kind of pressure. So I won’t.”

“So you’re just going to live in one crumbling ruin of a building after another?” Rufus frowns as he sets hairbrushes and polish onto the dresser. 

Felix watches him for a moment, and then smiles. “Thanks, Rufus.”

It catches him off-guard. “What? For what?” Rufus asks, squinting at him as though expecting some sort of stupid joke.

“For caring. For worrying about me,” Felix says, entirely sincere, picking up an empty box and folding it closed. “I know you don’t want me to get caught in some sort of cleaving event and end up in a million pieces on the surface. But I promise I do thoroughly check the location of my apartments, and that they’re not likely to fall off the side of the city at a second’s notice. I’ll be fine here. Really.”

There’s an awkward silence, wherein Rufus won’t look directly at Felix, a soft scarlet glow at the tips of his ears, which is how Felix knows he was right on target. For a man who keeps people at arms length, Rufus is certainly easy to read once you know how. 

It’s sweet, really. Felix appreciates it.

With a purposeful flourish, he hefts up one of the two large boxes remaining onto the bed, and opens the lid. The inside is almost exploding with fabric. “Anyway!” he declares. “Onwards to putting away all my wardrobe! Rufie, grab the other one!”

“... Wait, are both of these just clothes?!”

🌗

More from LUNAMARA:

Fragments: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9]

Comics: [Good Night] [Good Morning]

👑

The old paper crinkles pleasantly under Felix’s fingers. For all he loves the sleek design of the tablets he usually teaches from, sometimes the tactile realness of paper is more enjoyable. Plus, when it comes to educating the princess, such luxurious materials are nigh on expected, so he can get away with requesting them.

“So this is you,” he explains as Elsie leans halfway over the desk, her hair spilling over her shoulders and nearly blocking his view.

“It doesn’t look like me,” she critiques with the honesty one can only expect from a girl barely 60. She grabs the nearest pencil and starts drawing hair and a dress onto the anatomical model.

“Okay, you fix it. Will you listen to my explanation while you fix it?”

“Mmhmm!”

She’s fairly good at multitasking, so he presses on. “When you eat manna, it goes down into your stomach here,” he both holds his hand on his belly, and taps on the diagram with his highlighter. Helpfully, she draws a star where he tapped. “Yes, there. Once it’s in your stomach, your body takes the manna, and breaks it down. What does it break it down into?”

“I dunno,” she says first, but he waits, until eventually she hedges a guess. “Maen?”

“Yes!” he grins brightly. “Maen is the energy that makes up all magic in the universe. It’s actually a shortening of ‘magical energy’, neat right?”

Elsie is too busy adding frills to the hem of her dress to actually agree with him about how interesting etymology is. A shame.

“Once the maen is in your body, it travels around it on the maen circuits. They run right next to your veins and nerves, and have special ‘pools’ all over, where the maen gathers. Can you draw more stars where I point?”

“Yeah,” she agrees, and he begins working around the body. First, travelling up the chest, then the neck, then the head. She has to draw the stars very small here, because there are so many points particularly on the face and skull. It looks like the figure sneezed on a constellation. “I can’t even see the eyes any more…”

“That’s okay, we’ll draw a bigger head in a minute so you can fit the stars in better,” Felix chuckles. “It’s important to know where the pools are, because they’re the places where maen exits the body when we use it to cast magic. Different kinds of magic use different pools on the body. So when I give you a kiss on your booboos, it’s not because I’m trying to eat you up!”

Elsie gives him a dry look. “I know that. I’m not 40.”

“I know you’re not!” he holds his hands up in surrender. “But I’ll always remember the time when I pretended to eat you, and you got really scared!”

“Well I don’t remember that at all,” she sniffs, then turns back to adding more details to her dress on the paper. “Are there pools on the hands?”

“Yes there are, very good! And also all up the arms here…”

It doesn’t take long to cover the rest of the figure in stars, on the front and the back side. Meanwhile, Elsie’s dress design is also coming along swimmingly.

“Did you get the idea for this dress from the present you got from the Naribians?” Felix asks.

“Yes, but I’m making it better with my own parts,” she says airily.

“You know, humans have maen circuits too!”

Now this finally gets her full attention. She looks at him like he’s grown a second head. “They do?”

“Yep! They’re veeeery thin and don’t get used much. Unlike starfolk, humanfolk can’t use their maen circuits by just thinking about it. So do other animals and plants, but even smaller, nearly not there at all.”

“Ohhh…” she trails off, mulling this new information over. “Doesn’t it hurt?”

“No, it’s not like with us where it hurts them to not use magic every now and then. They can live their whole lives and never use it, and be perfectly healthy!”

She continues to chew on this new fact for another minute of silence, before suddenly saying. “But what if that’s why they die fast? Humans, and animals.”

Admittedly, Felix wasn’t expecting that. Leave it to kids to come up with unexpected questions. He’s struck silent for a moment, pondering this himself. Who knows, maybe that was the reason. He’s not educated enough to know for sure. But then, when he’s not even an adult himself, he’s not sure what people are expecting.

“You know what, I don’t know!” he finally says with a laugh. “Let’s make a note of it, so we can look it up later in the library or with one of the professors.”

“Okay,” she agrees, scribbling the note in the top corner of the paper. “It doesn’t make much sense that the plants like trees live almost as long as we do, but the humans don’t. Humans look almost just like us, but their ears are weird and small and their bodies are big and hairy.”

“Sure do!”

"Do you think if I tried I could grow hair on my face like them?"

"... Maybe one day, Elsie!"

🌗

More from LUNAMARA:

Fragments: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9]

Comics: [Good Night] [Good Morning]

💥

If Felix closes his eyes, he can pretend that the distant rumble is merely thunder. That the pattering against the canvas of the tent is just the rain. That the cries of shock and pain are…

Well, his imagination isn’t all that good.

🦢

Felix is sure he once heard a philosopher say that only two things were certain: death and taxes. Having been embroiled in the political sphere quite against his will for the past 140 years of his life, he can say with certainty that not only is that true, but that people will occupy 90% of their time arguing about one or both topics when presented with the option to do so.

He doesn’t, technically, have to be here. He’s a mid-level bureaucrat at best, these days, and he worked hard to make himself less significant in the public eye, so he’s not obligated to turn up to public senate meetings. But Cas asked him, and Elsie– well, she didn’t ask, she’s too proud for that, but she also didn’t forbid him to come, which for a girl just a couple of decades past a century, means she desperately wants his company.  

Cas plays his role as a guard very well. He looks imposing and cold in his gleaming armor, standing at attention with his spear in hand next to Elsie’s seat at the head of the long wooden table. His gaze is hard and constantly moving, sweeping over the irritated expressions of the senators in front of him. Behind them and further back, a much less organised gaggle of common people, those who are interested enough to take time out of their day to watch old fogies argue with a girl young enough to be their granddaughter.

The room is packed. He’s not sure what that says about their society, or whether the situation has simply gotten to a point where nobody can afford to be “disinterested in politics”.

“My Lady,” says a senator through his teeth, as Elsie inclines her head in his direction. “If the Queen’s government doesn’t disclose to its people the full details of the incident, I fail to see how we can maintain mutual trust!”

“You are expected to trust your Queen by her nature of being Queen, Senator Aurelius,” Elsennae replies. “And all the relevant details have already been disclosed to your office, and to the public.”

“And yet none of it pertains to exactly how long we have left running on our current power!” he snaps back, raising his voice and drawing a few shouts of agreement from the crowd. “The people need to know exactly how much is needed to keep their homes aloft. How else are we to live our lives?!”

Another senator slams her hand onto the table. “How long do we have until another cleaving event like this!?” 

“If we don’t know, how are we going to evacuate people from the area in time?!”

“How long before Lunamara itself drops out of the sky!” 

Elsennae raises her hands to calm her people, though it takes a few seconds before they quiet down. Felix feels his skin crawl with an unpleasant feeling. For some reason, it reminds him of the whistling of a mortar shell through the air.  

“In the interest,” Elsennae says loudly and clearly. “Of the people of Lunamara not living their lives in anxiety and fear, we have chosen not to openly disclose the numerical values of the power needed to maintain current altitude. Regardless we ask for people to continue operating on minimum power at all times, and encourage those who feel ready to enter the Dream–”

Felix moves, but Cas moves faster, smacking the bolt of magic out of the air with his spear, and sending it careening into the nearby wall, where it explodes with enough force to knock multiple senators from their chairs. The crowd panics, as do the politicians, but Felix scrambles to Elsie’s side. 

“Felix!” Cas barks, standing between the princess and the crowd. He’s looking for the offender, but in the chaos, it’s unlikely he’ll find them. If he does, Felix doesn’t envy them. “Get her out of here!”

He doesn’t need to be told twice. Elsie’s still small enough to be picked up, which he does, sweeping her into his arms and escaping out of the side door. The palace is a maze, but he’s as familiar with it as he is with his own face, so he takes a winding route that would lose any pursuers that could somehow get past Cas. Again, unlikely, but he’s not made it this far without being careful.

Finally, he stops in a small side room. Closing the door, he seals the edge of it with crystal. Hardly the strongest, but better than nothing. Then he leans against it, sliding down until both he and Elsie are sat on the floor. 

This room used to be for servants, he’s fairly sure. It hasn’t seen use in a century, and the dust is prevalent. Elsie would probably use that as an excuse later, for why her eyes are bloodshot and her throat sore. A princess ruling in the place of her sleeping mother can’t afford to look weak.

For now, here with him, she’s just a little girl crying in his arms, shoulders shaking with the weight of an entire crumbling city upon them.

If Felix can bear at least some of the weight for her, he’ll attend every farcical meeting until the end of time.

🌗

More from LUNAMARA:

Fragments: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9]

Comics: [Good Night] [Good Morning]

🦢

It’s not like Felix enjoys unpleasant jobs - it just seems that it always falls to him to be the one to do them. 

Perhaps he has too much of an approachable face, so people feel comfortable with asking him to do more than others would. He would like to think it’s because he’s more capable, but he knows he isn’t. He doesn’t enjoy paperwork and slogs through it with gritted teeth. He’s much more comfortable dealing with people face to face, but knows that even in that area, some people find him too chummy and familiar for their tastes. 

Still. Unpleasant jobs must be done.

🦢

Felix makes sure to stop at the Overlook, as ever. No need to rush through the palace halls to her highness’s side with more portents of their once glorious city’s decline. Instead, he takes a moment to enjoy the view of what else they lost, in the century before. For a short while, he can forget even the weight of the report he carries in his arms.

The Surface is beautiful, even now.