Alpha Centauri

by StLeibowitz

Chapter 11: Dinner with Friends

The dining room of Uisceban Castle was enormous and opulent. While its high ceiling and windowed walls were built of the same stone as the rest of the building, tapestries in a multitude of colors, depicting what Twilight assumed were historical events of note, covered them. The center of the chamber was dominated by a long, polished cypress table, with cushioned benches alongside it like some form of immense, fancy picnic table. A pair of thrones sat at one end of the table. Those were for herself and Beta, according to the elaborate place cards set out at each spot.

Lighting was provided by the suns. There wasn’t an electric light to be found, though torch sconces did seem to be hammered into the walls – bare right now – for less clement days. The floor was decorated with a few wine-red carpets. The silverware seemed to be actual silver, as did the plates and wide-mouthed goblets. In short, everything about the room told her that she was dining well above her station today, even as some part of her acknowledged that this was probably, technically, below her new station. It was an impressive display, all the same.

And yet, she thought, it doesn’t match with the style of the buildings outside. It’s an anachronism – even Canterlot Palace gets updated occasionally. Maybe he can’t afford to update it? Or maybe he just likes the style?

There was small talk prior to being seated, minor issues of little importance to her yet. Every now and again, a noblemare or stallion would trot up to her, seem to gawk for a few seconds, and then ask her stance on some minutiae of policy – what do you think about the latest tariffs Lord Seasnake has imposed on traders in the Straits? What is your opinion on the arming of outlands settlers for self-defense? Have you had any involvement in the sentencing of my third cousin who was caught embezzling funds from the Mines? How is my third cousin who was caught embezzling funds in the mines? Is the prison where my third cousin who was caught embezzling funds from the mines being held one suited to incarcerating kelpies of his stature? Where is my –

“Lady – Coral Wave, was it?” she interrupted patiently. The brown-green kelpie in front of her blinked.

“Erm – yes, Queen Centauri. Alpha Centauri.”

“I don’t know who your third cousin who was caught embezzling funds from the mines is, nor why it’s any of my business,” she informed her shortly. “Asking repeatedly of how he’s doing, phrased differently, is not going to get you a better answer than ‘I don’t know’. Sorry.”

“Oh – it’s quite alright, dear,” she giggled. “It’s just – after all, he is my cousin, even if he’s gone a bit bad in the – what I mean to say is, I care about him deeply, and not solely about getting a cut of the proceeds as certain other members of the nobility might insinuate. We’ve known each other since we were foals, and – “

“Is she nattering on about her cousin still?” another noblemare asked loudly, trotting up and rolling her eyes. “He’s the worst of the bunch, I can tell you that. Artie was just trying to get his worth out of those tight-fisted miners, but Penny Pincher – “

“But Penny Pincher what?” the first demanded angrily. “I doubt you even know who Art Sands is, much less how guilty – “

“I’ll just take my leave then,” Twilight said, stepping backwards into the crowd. The two nobles didn’t even seem to notice.

“Of course I know Art Sands, he’s my third cousin once – “

“Oh please – “

“Madam Alpha!” a rough male’s voice growled. She drew up short as a black wolf in golden armor interposed himself in her path. He came up to her chest, just barely, and bore a number of bald scars across his face and exposed fur. If anything, it looked like the armor had been custom-made to show off his old battle wounds. “I had heard much of your return, but to see it with my own eyes – the stories do not give you justice.”

“Um…thanks?”

A second wolf joined him, no less scarred but much older, with a silver-tinted coat. “Longfang, get back with the pack. I am speaker here, it was ordained by the alpha.”

“But, dear Greyback, I am speaking with the Alpha!”

“Not in any official capacity – but of course, I’m sure you knew that, and weren’t about to beg her to intercede in our politics to make you – “

“Beg?”

“I have to be somewhere else,” Twilight excused herself. The wolves seemed to be on the edge of violence; she retreated with perhaps undue haste.

“Would you like a drink, my Qu – “ a servant started to ask as she passed.

“No thanks!” she replied hastily, and moved quickly off.

She wove easily through the crowd, slipping through the wide spaces between kelpies without any trouble. Fortunately for her, kelpie coats were extremely adhesive – and an implication of that appeared to be much greater bubbles of personal space. She wondered with an idle detachment what other effects that might have had on their society during her absence as she angled towards Beta, the one island of familiarity in a sea of strangers. She appeared to be deep in conversation with a thunderbird with a thick scar diagonally across his face.

“Alpha!” she exclaimed as she walked up. “This is the captain of the Royal Guard, Captain – “

“Thunderclaw Rookwind,” he answered in a gravelly voice and with a short bow. “Charmed.”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Captain Rookwind,” she responded evenly. More hesitantly, she asked, “If it’s not too touchy of a subject, where did you get – “

“Saving a flockmate from a buggane,” he answered. His beak made smiling impossible, but Twilight could see a hint of one in his eyes…eye. “They are quite aggressive, in the Outlands.”

There was that word again – buggane. “What are they?” she asked curiously. Rookwind cocked an eyebrow; Beta winced.

“She has yet to regain many of her memories,” Beta hastily explained. “It will not be an impediment to our rule, she’s a fast learner – right, Alpha?” Twilight nodded.

“I did not mean to imply that it would be,” he assured her. “But if she is to rule as co-Queen, I would suggest filling her in on security threats before she makes a fool of herself before some of the more military-minded nobles.” The sound of a bell, crystal-clear and sharp, echoed through the hall and cut through the disparate conversations like a knife. Rookwind bowed again to them. “It would seem dinner has begun, my Queens. It was a pleasure speaking to you.”

“So, what is a buggane?” Twilight asked again as she followed Beta to their seats. “Are they from another nation? Are we at war?”

“They are giant, bipedal mole-like beasts with sharp claws and sensitive noses, that greatly enjoy making meals out of luckless pups and foals,” she answered, with some degree of bitterness. “They are honorless, debased things, that I regret making and regret having worked alongside even more, but the one thing I regret most of all is that not one of them stood by their sworn agreement to serve us when the War of Nightmares ended.”

“You and Proxi?”

“Yes.” She fell into a brooding silence.

The thrones were cushioned and comfortable, the fabric of the padding somehow not clinging to her coat when she shifted positions. They were built more for laying sideways, facing the table, than for sitting up straight, like chairs in Equestria. It was surprisingly comfortable, she found. Magic would allow her to lift and eat food with a minimum of motion.

Measured Speech made himself apparent again for the first time since they’d entered the dining hall, smiling self-confidently as he lifted a goblet into the air. He stood to Beta’s right, between her and Twilight, and cleared his throat.

“Noblemares and gentry of my humble home province of Uisceban, and perhaps even from more distant locales – and I am referring to one stallion in particular, the venerable and odd Lord Radiant Eye.” Chuckling; a pale ochre kelpie stallion with a combed-back brown mane inclined his head politely towards Speech. “Of course, in light of recent events, I would be apologizing to Radiant, had I not lost so much gold in our accursed betting pool - for tonight, mares and gentry, our Queen Alpha Centauri graces us once more with her presence!”

There was mild applause. Radiant Eye grinned, probably at the thought of how much money he’d made from her return; past that, there wasn’t an immense deal of outwards appreciation of that fact. They just need time to acclimatize, she reassured herself. Luna didn’t get much warmer a welcome than this after she came back. Everything will work out in the end.

Then again, some traitorous part of her mind reminded her, Luna was gone for a shorter time period, was demonized in her absence, and almost forgotten besides…

Shut up.

“But perhaps you are looking forward to addressing more…pressing concerns, no?” Speech continued warmly. “My cooking staff have been hard at work since early in the morning, preparing a worthy feast for such a gathering of distinguished individuals – two Queens, two Lords of the Realm, and an assemblage of barons and baronesses besides, after all, deserve only the finest!” The applause was much more enthusiastic this time, Radiant Eye excepting himself. She frowned at him, puzzled. Something about his name seemed familiar.

Her attention snapped back to Measured Speech once again when he tapped a silver spoon against the side of the goblet – it had to be enchanted somehow, a ringing of such volume couldn’t possibly come from tapping a spoon against a goblet – and the sound of a bell once again filled the hall. “And now, good guests of Castle Uisceban, I present to you – the first course!”

On cue, twin processions of servers marched in through the doors at either end of the hall, rolling large soup tureens in alongside them. They stopped midway down opposite sides of the room; servers with silver ladles nestled in the crooks of their forelegs drew soup from the pots and expertly deposited it in the goblets of the guests. Twilight examined the food once it was served to her with much delay – it seemed the diarchs and host were served last. The soup was some form of vegetable broth with chunks of carrot, cucumber, and radish in it. It tasted surprisingly good; all but the wolves finished theirs well before the next course – plates of warm crusty bread with some form of oil spread, and hard white cheese – came out. Beta seemed to particularly enjoy the cheese.

“Try it, it’s good!” she insisted. Twilight took a small bite of her piece and had to agree – it was initially a sharp, otherwise almost bland flavor, but it had a nutty aftertaste that encouraged her to finish off the rest of the block.

There was a lull in the meal after that, in which drinks were served and Measured Speech was at least as busy as his servants, flitting from guest to guest quickly and ensuring cups were topped off and conversations remained lively. Voices competed with the enticing smell of something savory being plated in the kitchens for control of the air. Then, outside, someone started setting off fireworks of some sort – the flashes of color were distractingly visible through the windows, accompanied by deep, rumbling bass reports that shook the castle.

“Idiot noisemakers,” Measured Speech cursed those responsible, to mutters of agreement from many other nobles. He directed a group of servants to draw the claret curtains closed across the windows, obstructing the sunset – the suns seemed content to run themselves without her or Beta’s personal guidance, for a day at least – and temporarily plunging the room into darkness. Lamps were brought out quickly, magical yellow globes that sat easily in the sconces Twilight had assumed were for torches, and conversation resumed, slightly more subdued, as if the speakers were disheartened that they were no longer the loudest beings in the vicinity.

“Ignorant urbanites,” a kelpie to Twilight’s right grumbled, sipping from a glass of wine. “Disturbers of the peace.”

Another boom shook the building; one of the attendant wolves flattened her ears and growled peevishly.

“It sounds,” Radiant Eye said, setting his own glass of wine down, “like they are having a great deal more fun than us.”

“Feel free to join them, Radiant,” a kelpie mare across the table smirked. “Maybe you can find a few new recruits for your secret society.”

“It is not now, and never was, a secret society,” he responded placidly. “I doubt if even calling it a society is accurate, consisting as it does of my family and my personal Guard.”

“Your personal guards whom I would very much like off our shared border,” a stallion interjected from the far end of the room. “Or do my own kelpies scare you?”

“We are of the same nation, Shattered Suns,” Radiant rebuked him gently. “Our old Queen may be back from the deepest past, but there are some things that really ought to stay behind there.”

Another firework detonating punctuated his sentence ominously. Measured Speech interrupted the discussion before it could become more heated by announcing the impending arrival of the third and main course. Cheering greeted his proclamation, but even more cheering greeted what was perhaps the greatest animal rights abuse Twilight had ever seen when it was wheeled out of the kitchen like a coffin on a trolley.

That the roasted creature on the platter, surrounded by greens and drizzled with purple sauce, had once been alive was unmistakable, yet she could see no stab wounds on it to suggest how it had been killed. Its hair was gone, leaving behind a crispy brown skin encrusted with dull green bits of herbs. She could imagine how it had been cooked – spitted, maybe, and turned over an open flame for several hours. That was how it had been done back before the War of Nightmares, and this deer had every appearance of having been prepared traditionally. She wondered how many fawns it had had to care for before whatever hunter that finally brought it down had found it. She wondered how it would taste.

“Is something wrong?” Beta asked concernedly.

“I think I may be about to ruin everything,” Twilight admitted, swallowing nervously. “Is there any sort of order of precedence for serving…this?”

“We have first pick, then the host, then anyone else,” she answered, confused. “Why is this a problem?”

“The finest pick of my own personal herd. I drowned it myself this morning,” Measured Speech declared proudly. A few kelpies clapped slowly; Rookwind nodded with approval.

“You are strong to have forced such a large specimen under,” the Thunderbird complimented him. “It will make a fine meal, that is certain!”

“Oh, I hope so, Captain,” he replied, beaming. “I had my finest chefs supervise its preparation, from the first moment of its disembowelment and cleaning to the last instant of its roasting. The herbs alone cost more than what a hunter earns in a year. I am assured by all involved in its preparation that it will be excellent – though perhaps we should leave that up to the judgment of our Queens?”

“Aye, it is customary,” Rookwind bobbed his head again. “Perhaps the guest of honor should have first pick?”

“I am in full agreement,” Measured Speech concurred. He turned and looked straight at Twilight. “It’s all yours, my Queen.”

The roast deer was set in the center of the table by the servers, facing towards Twilight. She felt physically ill looking into the spaces where its eyes had been – they hadn’t even bothered to remove the head! Was its brain still inside? Were its organs still in there? Oh, Caelum, they’d drowned it, hadn’t they? It had died with its lungs filling up with water, panicking and trying desperately to swim to the surface so it could get back to frolicking through the forest, or whatever deer did during the day. They’d –

“Alpha?” Beta prodded. She realized she’d zoned out slightly. She was shaking a little.

“Vegetarian,” she mumbled. “Pony for two thousand years. Animals can think. Dead animal I’m expected to eat.” Beta’s eyes widened in realization.

“Alpha will not be sharing in this course, Measured Speech,” she declared, to murmuring of surprise. “It’s not intended as a snub of you – she has simply lived in a vegetarian culture for two millennia.”

“Pardon?”

“I would love to explain the intricacies of a star’s life, but there isn’t enough time left in the night,” she responded wanly. “I am sure that such an intelligent congregation of beings as yourselves could find some other equally intellectually stimulating conversation.”

“Ah. Of course.” He nodded. “Shall I have the chef prepare something more…palatable, for you then?”

“No, thank you,” she answered. “I’m fine.” I’ve lost whatever appetite the first courses may have given me, she thought.

Measured Speech seemed to have found himself at a loss for words. After a brief pause, he shrugged and returned to the business of serving the rest - once he claimed a few thick portions of the creature's flank for his own enjoyment, of course. With magic, beak, and claw, they tore off strips of skin and the outer layers of meat; within an hour, the deer had been stripped down to the bone in some places. Rookwind claimed the head and had cracked the skull open to get at the brain – which had, in fact, been left in. With the face and its vacant eyes no longer staring at her, she felt almost like she could let her curiosity and hunger overpower her revulsion, but the image of the deer as a living thing haunted her mind, and her plate remained empty while everyone else’s were heaped with small bones and bits of gristle, though the wolves didn’t even leave that.

Biologically, she acknowledged, there was no reason she should have been unable to eat the dish, even as a pony. Equines were more than capable of digesting meat, especially ponies – hypothesized to be an adaptation that allowed ponies to rise to sapience while other variants eventually descended into extinction, in several evolutionary biology journals she’d read in Equestria. They just never did, anymore. There were occasional oddities, ponies who spent time amongst griffons usually, who would eat small amounts of meat with regularity, but typically not in public, and they were far from the norm, especially with several common prey animals being capable of language. She’d never eaten any meat for mainly that reason. And now, here she was, in a culture where eating meat was not only acceptable, killing what you ate was evidently a point of pride – and she was expected to participate.

“You have been staring in disgust at my plate for almost ten minutes, my Queen,” a kelpie noblestallion remarked around a mouthful of deer. “May I help you?”

“Show her a bit of respect, Glorious Star,” Radiant chastised him. “She is your Queen.”

“What kind of Queen won’t eat meat?” he asked. He swallowed finally. “Who knows what other kinds of odd notions a culture like that might have put into her head?”

“Everyone has eccentricities,” Rookwind rumbled. “Do I have to get out my photo album for you to peruse?”

“Er – no, that’s quite alright, Captain Rookwind,” Glorious muttered, returning his attention to his food. “Though admittedly, your hobby is a more extreme example of an eccentricity.”

“And perhaps, to our Queen, the concept of eating meat is just as unquieting?” Radiant suggested pointedly. “I have known monks in the Outlands who refuse to eat the flesh of a once-living thing as well. They become ill upon eating it, they have gone so long without it.”

“Are we to be ruled by some kind of Outlander religious cult?” a wolf growled unhappily.

“Silence, whelp,” the wolf she recalled as Greyback barked. “I am speaker in this place.”

“You know Brightclaw’s opinion of – “

“Brightclaw has chosen me as his speaker,” the elder wolf interrupted, his voice tense with dangerously fragile patience, “and not you, pup. You will abide by his decision or you will challenge me for right of tongues in the accepted way.”

“Not within this dining hall,” Beta sighed unhappily. “Obey your pack’s decision, please, for the sake of civility.”

“A pack cannot have two dire wolves claiming to be alpha at once!” the young wolf snarled. “This is the mind of Brightclaw!”

Without a sound, Greyback whipped around and locked his jaws closed around the younger wolf’s throat, too fast for the eye to follow. The insolent underling whimpered submissively with pain and fear, head caught at an uncomfortable angle and a hair’s breadth away from the reaper. Slowly – painfully slowly – Greyback loosened his hold and released him, filling his mouth with meat a moment later. “Your throat tastes of the disloyalty that tainted its words,” he growled. The other wolf remained silent this time.

“Is this truly what Brightclaw thinks?” Beta asked wearily. Reluctantly, Greyback nodded.

“The pup speaks truly, if without sanction,” he admitted. “A pack with two alphas quickly becomes two packs. He wished to know which pack to place his loyalty with.”

“We rule together,” Beta declared. There was iron in her voice – the point was not up for debate. “Anyone who desires otherwise, leave my presence.”

Wordlessly, every last noble at the table stood and filed out of the room. Perhaps not every noble, Twilight realized – Measured Speech remained behind at least. Radiant Eye did as well. Rookwind didn’t budge from his perch upon the bench; his only response was to peck at a strip of meat on the former plate of a neighbor. The doors slammed shut with a sound echoing with finality. Beta sighed.

“They’ll come around,” she assured them all. “I’m sure of it! How can they not come around? I mean, being a vegetarian in a culture of predators may be an obstacle to acceptance, sure, but they can overlook that. I know they can!”

“I fear you may be more than a little over-optimistic, my Queen,” Radiant responded sadly. “Many of them have too much invested in a monarchy to allow a diarchy to come to pass.”

“There will be resistance, surely – but even the most petulant of nobles will lose patience with trying to bring back what is gone forever after a few years, at most,” Measured Speech said reassuringly. “Everything will work out in the end. The end may simply be a bit further away than we had anticipated.”

“Damn the nobility,” Rookwind growled. “They have taken your lesson to heart, my Queen Beta. They will be as unchanging as a mountain and thrice harder to move out of your way.”

“I fear Rookwind has the right read of it,” Radiant sighed. “The wolves, especially, will not take well to this change. The common folk are far more fluid – from the sound earlier, I’d think they’d already declared today a national holiday.”

“What the peasantry think is immaterial,” Speech retorted dismissively. “It is the nobility we must focus on – the ones with power and the ones with clout. They are the beings most dangerous to Queen Alpha, and to you.”

“We are both beyond their reach,” Beta said.

“Your power in this world, however, is not,” he pointed out. “And it is built on the back of the nobility. To have them on your side would be to have Alpha accepted wholeheartedly by every segment of society.”

“By one segment, you mean,” Radiant corrected irritably. “You seem to forget that the nobles are a minority, and that the majority are just as opinionated.”

“Far less capable of obstructing her, though.”

“I’d say even more so, and for longer periods of time.”

“Enough,” Beta commanded gently. “I realize re-integrating her into the Queendom will be…difficult, but we cannot let petty arguments over the best approach divide us.”

“They were well enough divided already,” Rookwind interjected. Beta gave him a sharp look.

“We must work together for this to succeed with any measure of speed,” she insisted. “This will work. We’re going to be visiting Caisleanard next, Radiant – is everything prepared for us to arrive tomorrow?”

“Everything is present and accounted for, save myself,” he answered. “Will the venerable Lord Measured Speech deign to grace my humble home with his presence?”

“Perhaps, perhaps not.” He shrugged. “It seems I have a great deal of wrangling to do with my own vassals before I can honestly say my demesne is fully behind the Queens.”

“I will attend of course,” Rookwind proclaimed while ripping another strip of meat off the deer carcass. Nobody challenged the point.

“We’ll have to leave tonight, Alpha.” Beta turned to her, sitting up in her throne. “Caisleanard is several hours away by wing, on calm nights, and we’ll have to travel with our entourage – otherwise, we could be there instantly.”

“Flying is kind of nice, honestly,” she said. “I have a friend back on Equestria who takes any opportunity she can to be in the air. I think I can almost understand why now.” Still, she added silently, it’s boring compared to being in that constellation.

“It’s my preferred method of travel on Domhan,” Beta agreed, pleased. “Caisleanard is a beautiful region, too – it’ll be more than a pleasant flight, I hope.”

“I will have the Thunderbirds under my rule keep the sky calm for you,” Radiant told them, smiling. “If I could only take wing like them, I might have a better idea of what you talk about than my pitiful tower can give.”

“Pitiful,” Measured Speech snorted. “Opulent covers it better. How you afforded to build it mystifies me. Surely, your pastoral little town can’t provide that much in taxes?”

“Oh, I don’t tax them at all,” he replied. His enjoyment of Speech’s dumbfounded look was apparent.

“How do you afford to maintain a personal guard then?” he spluttered. “A noble household? That bloody tower?”

“A personally-owned crystal mine and an all-volunteer guard force motivated by the desire to not be taxed will do that for you.” He sipped from his goblet of wine. “Old money helps. We have been loyal servants of the crowns since before the War of Nightmares. It will be a true pleasure having you back within Caisleanard, Queen Alpha.”

A connection fired off in her mind, remnants of deep memories connecting with logic and inductive reasoning to force her to exclaim, “Eye!”

“How much wine did you have, exactly?” Beta asked.

“What? No, I didn’t have – that’s not important!” She turned to Radiant Eye. “Radiant Eye. I recognize that name!” Her brain scrambled to piece things together quickly enough to not make her look like a fool. “Eye, Eye…you’ve been servants of the crowns since before the War of Nightmares?”

“So I have said, my Queen.”

“What about during the War of Nightmares?”

“It was perhaps one of our most notable moments,” he answered with a hint of pride. “A dark time for our genealogy, true – only one living member after the first sack of Caisleanard – but she did great things and saved our family from extinction.”

“Yes, but her name!” Twilight insisted. “Eye, Eye, Eye…Watchful Eye?”

“I was wondering if you’d remember,” he responded with a slight grin. “That was, indeed, her name. Dozens of generations have passed since, but I am proud to claim descent from such a storied mare.”

“She was. A great mare, I mean.” Memories flickered through her mind half-formed, but they were enough; they were happy memories, at least, of a kelpie filly and later the best friend she’d had during the war. “Wasn’t the position of Captain of the Royal Guard hereditary?”

“We conceded it to Rookwind eyrie almost three hundred years past,” he answered. “Luminous Eye was no warrior. I am not a warrior. At this point, there is no one I would prefer to hold the post than Thunderclaw.”

“Your support is noted,” the thunderbird rumbled, pleased. “And I agree with your position.”

“Arrogant featherbag,” Speech chuckled.

“I always have more room in the album, Measured Speech.”

They laughed, even Alpha – though she wasn’t entirely certain what was so funny. Conversation wandered after that, jumping quickly from topic to topic and not lingering at all on any one. The servants opened the curtains later on to reveal a red moon rising high into the sky, but they remained a while longer even then. For the first time since she’d left Ponyville, she felt like she was among friends.

Author's Note:

Meanwhile, on Domhan, with Twilight again, finally...

Comments

[Monochromatic Rainbow]

3450234 Out of curiosity- what would magnetars, pulsars, and quasars be, then? This is honestly intriguing. And for that matter, gamma ray bursters and novae? And, one last thing- naked singularities?

[StLeibowitz]

3450298

Magnetars and pulsars, being subtypes of neutron stars, would basically be stars with different personalities having fun or participating in the patterns of their constellations. Past basic structural stuff, most stellar variations are simply bored stars without planets to fiddle with finding different ways of amusing themselves - like children left alone without toys trying to pass time by spinning really, really fast, or, in the case of magnetars, using the universe and its atoms as toys and seeing how much it would take to break them. Gamma ray bursters are from similar causes, with the exception of the death of large stars being added to the causes; novae, likewise.

Quasars are the active, distant hearts of galaxies with supermassive black holes inside them - stars would view them as things to be avoided, as they are destructive, dangerous environments with the constant threat of being consumed by a black hole. They're too distant to figure into the lives of most stars, but for the rogue stars that prefer solitude to the constant companionship of the Great Wheels and thus strike out into the intergalactic and intercluster black, they are points of reference for navigation - in the sense that a sign saying "Danger - Severe Radiation, Massive Gravitational Stress, and Large Gaping Pit into Nothingness" serves as a point of reference

Naked singularities? With a supreme being to enforce the cosmic censorship hypothesis, such things are mere myths A good thing, too - who knows what might lie inside the unbreakable prison of the event horizon?

[Xaldon Ajide]

Yes, loved the chapter.

[Europa]

This chapter reminded me of what kelpies in mythology do; trick people into touching them, then drag them underwater to drown them and eat them. Poor Twilight, though, probably gonna have an even tougher time integrating than Luna did.

Ugh, that moon is going to be trouble. Don't really know what she hopes to do, though. Even a red dwarf star is infinitely larger than a satellite.
3450298
Naked Singularities are not even proven to exist. They can exist in theory but the moment something disturbs them, such as the quantum flunctuations in every corner of the universe, they instantly form an event horizon and, thus, a black hole.

[Monochromatic Rainbow]

3451123 I'm aware they're just a hypothesis- but this is a universe with sapient stars and magic, so I figured a bit of reality bending was acceptable...

[Europa]

3451171

Well in that case...

*grabs physics*

*snap*

[Monochromatic Rainbow]

3452088 Normally I would be doing much the same thing as you, but when one spends half an hour trying to reason with family members and friends about the physics in movies and such... It hurt my brain, sorry about that.

We'll go with the author's explanation- omnipotent being to enforce cosmic censorship.

You can go repair physics now, heheh...

Edit: mobile device, what r u doin? Stahp!