sixthiterationlogs | the sun in my disgrace [OPEN + MINGLE]

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the sun in my disgrace [OPEN + MINGLE]

WHO: Raleigh Becket
WHERE: 6I village, Inn
WHEN: 21 August - mid morning
OPEN TO: All + Mingle
WARNINGS: ~~Put on your Eclipse Glasses~~ TBD

Raleigh had been on his way back from his normal morning routine of checking his traps and fishing for a while when he noticed the sun wasn't quite the way it normally looked - he'd caught a glance at the reflection and saw that the sun, normally perfectly round, was looking a little like a lemon that had gotten beaten up at the grocery store. Huh. An eclipse. He hasn't seen one since he was in Ranger training and he hadn't gotten a good look at that one because he hadn't been directly in the path of it (and, obviously, he'd been preoccupied).

This one, though, looks like it's just starting so Raleigh has time to go to the Inn and tell the people there that there's an eclipse starting and they should get something to try and look at it. He's not exactly sure of the science behind it but he remembers being a kid and making something with a box and earlier he'd done pretty well with the water. Maybe they can take pots outside with water and just look at the reflections? Might work. Maybe, too, one of the scientists has a better idea of how to get a look at the thing.

For his part, it's just something that's different from the norm. Raleigh hopes it's not a sign that the sun's going to start moving backward or staying up all month like it had a few months back and that it's just a perfectly normal, natural event. After earthquakes and people getting sick with some kind of crazy illness, it was good to just have something...mundane to focus on.

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Moana hadn't ever seen an eclipse before and was dumb enough to look up at the sun. She was barefoot, wearing her usual island dress, with Itiiti padding along at her heels. She hadn't realized that she was in Diana's way until the woman spoke and her attention was pulled down to the shadows that danced along the ground.

"Oh, yeah." She had to nudge Itiiti over before she was able to take a seat next to Diana. He had the habit of sitting next to anyone sitting on the ground. "Why are you looking at the ground if the sun and moon are in the sky?"

Moana really didn't know a lot about eclipses, they were very rare and if it wasn't a full eclipse it was hard to know it was happening.

Diana smiled easily at Moana as she sat on the ground next to her. She looked at the animal and then back to her young friend before looking back to the shadows on the ground. She liked Moana and was glad to have the company.

"Well, because looking up at the sun an damage your eyes." She pointed at the shadows of the eclipse that the trees were casting around them. "Sitting here, we can track the progress of the eclipse without hurting ourselves." She leaned a little closer to the shadows. "It's progressing nicely. It won't be long before the moon will fully block the sun out."

Moan looked down at the shadows with a curious stare. She had been staring at the sun for a short part of the day and now she felt silly for doing that. It hadn't hurt her eyes, it'd only been for brief moments to see if there was anything she could see. In the end, she hadn't been able to see anything over the bright sun.

One hand pat Itiiti affectionately while the other rested in her lap. "What is the eclipse?" She turned back towards Diana. "I know that it's when the moon is in front of the sun but what does it mean?"

She didn't understand it.

Diana looked up from the shadows and looked at Moana a little confused. She wasn't quite sure what she was asking. Was she asking about what the eclipse actually was or was she asking why it happened? Or maybe a combination of the two? Well she could always just answer both and hope that it made sense to the young woman.

"Well like you said it's when the moon moves in front of the sun... And that happens when the moon passes between whatever planet we're on and the sun. It doesn't happen often so we're lucky to be able to see it."

"So it'll be dark?" It sounded like a bad thing.

Moana's lips twisted into a frown. "But why? Is it really lucky to see." She was staring at the ground like there was an answer waiting in the shadow. She wanted to see something but it was only a reflection of the tree.

"There aren't any legends on my island about eclipse."

"Just for a couple of minutes," Diana was quick to reassure her.

"Why does it happen?" Diana thought for a moment and then looked back down at the ground before picking a stick up. "Okay, this is our planet," she said as she drew a circle in the dirt. And then she drew a sun and a little moon. "So the moon circles our planet and we in turn circle around the sun, but our planet also rotates around and that's why we have night and day... Does that make any sense so far?" She wasn't even sure if she was explaining it in a way that made sense.

Moana leaned forward and watched as Diana scribbled on the ground.

"Yeah." She knew about planets thanks to a few of the others in the village but she didn't actually know how the solar system worked. Moana was familiar wither her island and the world outside of that only continued to get bigger.

"Why does the moon circle the earth? I know that it also controls the tides." She knew about the ocean.

Diana blinked and chuckled softly. Mnemosyne would have been amused to see Diana trying to explain things so they made sense. She drew in a deep breath and then leaned back a little bit as she thought over how to best explain it all.

"There is a force between Earth and the moon called gravity. Because of gravity, larger objects pull smaller ones toward them. Most planets are larger than their moon, so they tend to pull on the moon. At the same time, the planet is being pulled by the sun. The sun is larger larger than the planet. The balance between those two “pulls” is what keeps the moon in orbit around the planet."

She shrugged and flashed Moana a smile. "Though I knew people who would have said it's just the will of the Gods."

Moana listened attentively, her dark brown eyes wide and inquisitive. She hadn't had this explained to her before.

"The pull then controls the tide and why the placement of the moon determines where the high and low tides are." Moana was smart and she was able to conclude a bit on her own. It also explained the length of night and day if everything was turning in a circular motion. She looked briefly down at her feet and then back up at Diana.

"Why can't we feel the planet moving?" Moana's gods were a little different. They weren't all powerful but spirits that brought life or destruction. Such as lava and tsunami's as the work of the gods.

Diana's grin widened and she nodded. Moana seemed to be catching on rather quickly, which was really impressive but not all that surprising. There was something about the young woman that had told Diana that she was very smart and she was glad that she'd been right about that.

"Well, the planet is constantly moving. And I know that you would expect to feel something, right? Well we don't feel anything because all of the motions are almost completely constant and we're moving along with those motions. Now if the planet suddenly started spinning in the other direction, we would feel a big jolt but things would slowly go back to normal."

Moana listened and then nodded. She supposed that made sense. If you were always spinning then you wouldn't notice it because it was something you had always done. It was interesting and it made her wonder about other things. "There was a time when the sun wouldn't set here. For over a week it was always in the sky."

She looked over at Diana curiously. "How could that happen if we're always spinning and everything is always circling. Wouldn't day to night always be the same?" Moana was having trouble wrapping her head around the event.

Diana's eyebrows rose a bit and truly she didn't know what to tell Moana. "I don't know," she said honestly. "This place, well, it doesn't seem to follow what normally should happen." They had after all been brought there without any explanation. Somehow she'd been stripped of her abilities.

"I think in a place like this, rules of nature don't matter. Things we think we know? Don't matter." She looked at Moana and shrugged. "I wish I could explain why this place is different. I wish I had answers for your question, but I don't and I'm sorry."

Moana shook her head. "It isn't up to you to have all the answers. Thank you for answering what you could." She flashed Diana a warm smile. "May I watch the rest of the eclipse with you?"

She didn't know what to explain but she wanted to see it for her own eyes. Even if it was just watching the shadows on the ground.

Diana nodded but she couldn't help but feel a little unsettled. It was strange knowing that things she'd been taught wouldn't always help her in the village since laws of nature didn't always seem to apply.

"Of course you can." She looked over at Moana's pig and then back to her young friend. "And your pig... Does he, ah, have a name?"

"Ah, yes!" She smiled and shifted so that Itiiti could peek up and look over at Diana. "This is Itiiti. He was hiding behind me when we first met. He's been a little skittish after the earthquake and hasn't liked going out into the woods alone."

Which was problematic because Moana relied on Itiiti to find mushrooms and roots in the forest that aren't poisonous.

"I admit I do not remember him being there when we first met, though... That whole day is a bit of a blur." She'd been having to deal with so much strangeness when she'd first arrived that she was truly lucky she remembered anything from it. "Did he come with you?"

She watched Itiiti and smiled. She'd never had a pet, hadn't had the time for one. She didn't count the animals when she'd grown up because every animal seemed as though it had belonged to everyone on the island. "He looks well now though."

Moana nodded her head in a brisk gestured. "That makes sense. He was hiding behind me anyway and trying not to be seen." She looked down at Itiiti with an affectionate smile. "See that, you weren't spotted." Itiiti snorted sounding very proud of himself as Moana answered Diana's question. "No, Itiiti showed up in a box with two coconuts one day. I don't know who left him for me but I was excited to meet him. I used to have a pet pig and rooster on my island. Pau and Heihei." She missed them.

"Yes," Itiiti belonged to Moana in the sense that he had arrived at her front door but he often had the habit of wandering around on his own. Moana didn't stop him but like any other family member she'd worry if he didn't come home at night.

"If you need Itiiti's help you just need to ask him. He's good at finding eatable roots and mushrooms. I can't always go out with him and when he goes out by himself he eats everything he finds." He was slowly becoming a fat pig.

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the sun in my disgrace [OPEN + MINGLE]

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