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gotnofucks · 4 years

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Chemical Romance

Pairing: Chris Evans x Reader

Summary: Chris won’t have you running away from him. You’re his. He owns your heart, and now he’ll own all of you.

Words: 4.5k

Warnings: RPF, smut, slight dubcon(ish), jealous and possessive Chris, toxic relationship, recording without permission, forced marriage

A/N: I wrote this months ago and pulled it out to share it with my bestie @donutloverxo . Berry finally convinced me to post this and helped me beta this. Babe, I love you!

You were way past your teenage years, and yet you had the urge to giggle like one. If you licked your lips, you could still taste the trace of wine that had stained his lips. The memory of them pressing against you, brushing gently until they tangled in a mix of tongue and teeth had a delicious heat burning in your face. This was a good date, the third good date with a good man you met, and you were excited for more.

Looking over your shoulder you saw the lights of his car disappearing in the dark of night and you sighed contently, shutting your door behind you and dropping your keys in the bowl by the door. All of a sudden, your body broke into goosepimples, a chill settling over you and it took you a moment to understand why. Your body was recognizing the dark presence before your mind could.

“Good evening sweetheart. Had a good date?”

The door was right behind you, you could easily grab your car keys right now and run away. And yet all you could do was hold onto the wall as your knees trembled. You’d never been good at running away from him anyway.

Chris was lounging on your sofa, watching you with those arresting blue eyes that you knew changed shades with his mood. His beard was thicker than the last you’d seen him, and his lips were pulled into a sardonic smirk, eyes glinting furiously.

“How?” You sputtered, still rooted to your spot. You could run, you should run, but you knew you wouldn’t go far. He let you go only so far to give you a false sense of achievement, a mere taste of relief and freedom until he snatched you back to himself.

“I always think that every time you leave, it would be the last. You’ll realize that its futile, you’ll realize that we’re meant to be together.” Chris said, “But never did I imagine you to be stupid enough to be with another man.”

His voice had been described as dreamy by many, even by yourself, but right now it only rang of danger and anger. Softness was Chris’s weapon, to deliver the meanest words with a smile that was poison sweet. One time, you had loved to taste that poison yourself. Did it still run in your veins and taint you?

Looking at you from under his lashes, he spread his legs and beckoned you to him. You gulped before following, not daring to look away from him until you were before him.

“Kneel” He ordered softly. You knees hit the ground, the rug digging into your skin. He watched you watch him, eyes locked in a dialog of their own until his rough hand caressed the skin of your cheek. You leaned into his touch, hating yourself for being a slave to him and your desire. Even on your knees, the familiar feeling of peace flooded your senses. Nothing made you feel as alive as worshiping him. And nothing killed you as much as loving him.

“Please” You begged, pressing a kiss into his palm. “Don’t do this to me.”

Chris regarded you with a look that was almost tender, his blue eyes staring into your own as if unearthing every secret you had ever kept from him. He pulled you closer, close enough to have you raise up and hold his shoulders while his lips brushed gently against yours.

“For as long as I live, you are mine. You know that. Why must you fight it?”

It had been a couple months since you last saw him, since the pads of his fingers had glided over the curves of your body and claimed you as his. You melted, you melted like the butter in a hot pan, sizzling with the heat of his ardor. One taste of him and you were ready to forget why you had left him, why you had packed up and left his house when he was out. Chris Evans didn’t just play your body, he also played your heart. He loved you so hard that it hurt.

You wondered if you should fight, if you should scream or cry. But you knew it the moment you walked inside your house tonight: you were going nowhere but to him. He held you as you captured his lips in yours, a hand fisting his hair and tugging. He pulled until you were on his lap, his beard scratching your skin and reminding you of all the ways he had marked you before.

Panting, you pulled away when he breathily whispered your name, eyes liquid and feral and kind. He was a man of many layers and you had unveiled the darkest of them. He no longer hid the rawest parts of him, and you never knew if it was a good thing or not.

“Pack up, I’m taking you back home.” He said, hands settling on your waist. “I am not spending one more night in a bed without you.”

You nodded, stealing another kiss until you surrendered to his demands. Again.

Dodger ran to you, whining and wagging his tail as you sat down to give him better access. You’d missed your furry companion, his coat soft on your cheek when you nuzzled into him. Chris chuckled, rolling your bags into his room while you and Dodger had your little reunion.

“I am so sorry Bubba” You cooed to him, scratching behind his ears. “I missed you so much. Did you miss me, hmm?”

Dodger barked, rubbing his body against you. You laughed, cuddling your little boy. You’d missed waking upto him snuggled by your feet and the soft pattering of his feet as he followed you around.

“He didn’t eat right for a week after you left. You were being a bad mommy.” Chris said coming behind you. He petted Dodger before pulling you up by your arm, your chest flushed to his. You loved how he smelled of coffee and beer and cinnamon. He tasted of them too, bitter and addictive.

Your fingers traced a path in his beard, lips pressing into the hollow of his throat. It scared you how much power he had over you. You’d promised yourself you’ll break away from his hold when you found him snooping in your phone again. His possessiveness knew no bounds. If Chris had it his way, he’d hide you in a castle made only for his eyes. But right now, in the heaven of his arms, you couldn’t remember why you left him in the first place.

“I am sorry.” You whispered, hugging him tight. His arms came around you, holding you so possessively close that even death couldn’t rip you apart. Chemical romance, that’s how Scott had explained your relationship once. Your friends had stopped complaining, had stopped warning after losing count over how often you broke up and got back together.

“I am so pissed at you.” He said in your ear, breath warm on your skin. “I want to erase every lingering trace of that man’s touch from your body. But more than that, I need to remind you who you belong to.”

You refused to look at him, burying your head in his chest even as you held him tighter.

“I belong to you. I know it baby, I made a mistake.” You said, voice muffled. Chris tutted, pushing your face away firmly as he forced you to meet his intense gaze.

“Here I am, feeling guilty for even touching other women during a scene that is supposed to be my job. And my girl goes around fucking other men because we had an argument?” He hissed, a nerve throbbing in his temple. You pouted, bottom lip wobbling as you tried not to cry. You were raised to be a strong woman, someone who could speak for herself. How was it so easy for this man to reduce you to a sniveling woman for something that wasn’t even your fault.

“I didn’t fuck him.” You countered and Chris’s eyes flashed. You stared at each other until Chris practically growled and dragged you towards the bedroom. Dodger trailed behind you, stopping once Chris ordered him to stay put.

His bedroom, a space you had shared and abandoned all too many times was the same as always. It reeked of his aftershave and cologne, the stars winking at you from the window that overlooked the ground. Chris shut the door, rounding on you and pushing you towards the bed.

“You didn’t fuck him?” He spat, ticked off. “You let him touch you, you let him put his hands on what belongs to me.”

You shivered as your back met the cold sheets, bouncing slightly on the mattress. His anger was scary, but more than that it was exciting. It was you who had brought this strong, powerful man to this animalistic side. You, who could make him scowl and shout and get his heart pumping enough to bring blood to his face. You, who made him primitive as he held you down and fucked you into submission.

“We only kissed.” You said, knowing how to provoke him. That kiss was nice, it was sweet. But your body craved rough and hard, it craved to be possessed and used and worshiped. It craved Chris who left his handprints on your butt and his spent in your cunt. It craved Chris who kissed you until you were out of breath, who whispered the filthiest things to you as he buried himself in your warmth over and over until you were too hoarse to even cry.

He knew it, he read that in your eyes and in your touch that seared through the layers of clothes on his body. He knew you were getting under his skin on purpose, hurting him the way he hurt you so many times. Neither of you held back.

You tore away at his clothes, bucking your hips frantically in a bid to get closer. Chris cursed, squeezing your ass in his large hands and grounding his hardness on your thigh.

“You are testing me” He warned, naked flesh touching yours and hands entwining. You ignored him, the wetness dripping down your core begging his attention.

“Eat me” You cried, wiggling under him. He held fast, rubbing his cock on your abdomen, groaning softly. He nuzzled your neck, kissing softly on the spot he knew drove you wild. His weight prevented you from moving too much, not allowing you to do anything for yourself.

“You don’t tell me what to do baby. Not after letting another man touch you. Not after you walked out on me again.” He said angrily, forcing his gentle touch on your body that craved his roughness. You sobbed against his mouth, getting drunk on his lazy kisses and feather soft caresses. You knew what he was doing, you knew he wanted you to break and beg. And you had no dignity.

“Please” You begged, pathetically with tears in your eyes. “Give me what I want Chris. I’ll be good to you, I promise.”

He smirked, sucking a pert nipple in his mouth and rolling it between his tongue. You moaned, struggling to move more. It wasn’t enough to have you under him. He needed more than your compliance. He needed your surrender, he needed you to love him with a hunger as great as his. He was greedy.

“Even when you beg, you look like a goddess. You’re my angel, but I’m not gonna let you go to heaven. We’ll sin together in hell.”

He dove in, tongue swiping away your juice in a practiced move as you howled at the suddenness of his attack. Your thighs held his head captive between their plump flesh, mewls spilling from your mouth without restraint as he finally gave you what you wanted. You pulled on his hair, steering him closer to your core that was flaming under his mouth and flooding with pleasure.

“Oh Chris!” You moaned, writhing and trembling. You had missed his beard scratching the sensitive flesh of your inner thighs, missed his nails digging in your flesh to keep you steady, missed his tongue poking inside your warm cavern to taste your sweet nectar. Chris never worshiped you like a devotee to the lord. He worshipped you like a man summoning the devil, by spilling blood and leaving marks that stain the soul.

“Look at you go darling, so beautiful” He praised, easing a finger inside you and curling it. You threw your head back, shattering with an orgasm that took your breath away. Pleasure was a feeling you were familiar with, but combined with Chris’s love and anger, it formed the most intoxicating mix that got you dizzy.

He kissed the swollen head of your clit, gently easing you down from your high with praises whispered directly to your leaking cunt. He cupped your pussy, grinding his heels against you as your eyes met.

“Nobody else will touch you here. Or anywhere else for that matter.” He ordered and you nodded, still desperate for him. His cock was red and angry, warm drops of precum leaking over your stomach and you tugged at him, asking to fill you up.

“Chris, I need you inside me. Please.”

He crawled up and laid beside you, jerking you on top of him. Your hands found his chest, lightly playing with his nipples and the spattering of hair there before moving down to cup his hardness and his balls. He jerked at the first contact, closing his eyes as his breath hitched and you smiled at your own effect over him. You could reduce him to a mess just as well he could to you.

Pumping his length, you licked it slowly, lathering it with your saliva. You remembered the day you’d named it Cumstopher Rogers and he’d slapped you with it, making you choke on him until you had to apologize.

“Put me inside you now because if I have to take over, I’ll choose which hole it goes in and you probably won’t like it.” He growled in impatience. You clenched, his threats going straight to your core.

You positioned yourself over him, sinking slowly and gently, feeling every part of him against your spongy walls. With your thighs flush to his, you stopped to just let the feeling of fullness last a little longer. No matter how many times you’d been with each other, the feeling of Chris being so deep inside you never got old. If you could, you’d never be empty.

“All my holes like your cock Mr. Evans. And I? I love it and your butt and your chest and arms and face and everything else.”

You moved at a slow pace, bouncing gently while holding onto his thighs. Taking his hand in yours, you placed it on your chest, asking him to play with your nipples as you rode him.

“You feeling powerful, baby? You feeling good bouncing on my dick?” He asked, pinching a nipple almost to the point of pain. You nodded, leaning down to kiss him as he started thrusting up a little, hitting your cervix when he went too deep. You rolled your belly, clenching your muscles around his length so that his eyes flew open and hands dug into the softness of your butt.

“Oh Chris, I missed this.” You told him, tasting the sweat on his temple. He nodded, his huge arms wrapping around you and pulling you intimately close.

“I missed you too, which is why I will make sure you never leave me. This is not your power move, this is mine.” He darkly murmured and your eyes met his in confusion. He looked at the side and you followed his gaze, mouth dropping open at the camera that blinked at you with a red light on.

“What the fuck, Chris?” You shout, trying to move away when he rolled you over and under him, thrusting in hard.

“Oh yes, what the fuck baby” He said, holding your wrists as he picked up his pace. “You think it’s okay to pack a bag and leave me every time? You think it’s okay to date other men, to kiss other men? You are mine. And if anyone needs proof of that, now I can show it to them.”

You cried out as he went harder, a pressure building deep inside your belly. Tears escaped your eyes, gazing into blue ones that you loved and hated with a passion. You could have asked him to stop now, you could shout that you don’t want him and he’s sick. But you didn’t. You knew he would stop if you really wanted him to, and as much as your heart broke and your chest tightened with hurt, you loved him. You loved his twisted ways to keep you with him. You loved it when he went above and beyond, got crazy in his desire for you. You were wanted. You were cherished.

“Fuck you.” You cursed, meeting every thrust of his with a raise of your hips. Your eyes closed, sweat dripping down your body as you let the animalistic part of you take over, screaming and tearing and fucking each other like two people whose only goal in life was to be embedded in the other’s heart and psyche.

“I’d like to see you try to walk out tomorrow after tonight.” Chris said, delivering punishing strokes that were agonizing and titillating, that were fire and ice. You held onto him, leaving crescent shaped scars to join the numerous tattoos across his body. He took you apart, fucked you so good all you could do was say him name and fall in a glittery haze of his presence. He came inside you, filling you to the brim and crushing your body with his weight.

You weren’t leaving, that much was obvious.

Throwing in your clothes haphazardly in the bag, you promised yourself this would be the last time you did this. You will not come back to this house and this bed. Chris and you were done for good. The past few months had followed the same pattern. You both rekindling the dying flame of your relationship, mending the broken hearts and trust until it went back to hell.

There were too many arguments, too much shouting and angry sex. Every time you sat down to talk, it ended with your legs in the air. Your mother was right. He wasn’t right for you. Chris wanted to be your hero and your villain. He wanted you to think of nobody but him. Any friends and family that warned you against him had to be cut off. He’ll dismiss every article the paparazzi published about him but would throw a fit if you so much as smiled at the cashier in the grocery store. He kept you close like a dog on a leash, feeling jealous at the very sight of you talking to any man. You’d wanted to give this relationship a chance, but as of twenty minutes ago, Chris had made sure it was over.

You wondered about taking your pictures, but it was better to stay away from any temptations. This was happening, and as much as it broke your heart, you will not come back to him. Zipping up your bag, you straightened just as Chris stormed inside the room, jaw clenched in anger.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” He barked, “Put your stuff back. I’ll be damned if I let you leave me again.”

You scowled at him, wiping the stray tears from your eyes. He had no right to ask anything of you, not after what he had just done.

“Fuck off Chris. I am leaving, and you can’t stop me.” You shouldered past him, sadly looking at Dodger who was whining softly as he watched you move. He had seen this happen enough times to know that you’re not coming home.

Chris marched behind you, snatching your wrist and pulling you back to himself. The blue in his eyes was darker, like the sky covered in thunder clouds. You squirmed, pushing against him.

“You. Are. Not. Leaving.” He hissed, looking scary and mad.

“How dare you? After what you did today?” You sobbed, hitting your fists on his chest. He held your jaw, bringing your face closer to him so he could peer into your watery eyes.

“I proposed! I got down on one knee. What the fuck is your problem?” He shouted, spittle flying from his mouth.

You shook your head, looking at him with an expression of disbelief. Is he that oblivious?

“Marriage is permanent Chris” You said, voice suddenly soft. “Marriage is living your life devoted to your partner. We can’t break up and leave and come back again. It’s a responsibility. You and I, we haven’t been able to keep a stable relationship. How the hell will we keep a happy marriage?”

Chris frowned, not liking what you said. He pushed you against the wall, caging you in with his huge arms on either side. You could smell the chocolate and wine on his breath from dinner, his hair all messed up from when he ran his hands through it. On his neck still hung the necklace you’d got him.

“Look at me” He said, pressing his forehead to yours. You breathed deeply, finding it difficult to maintain an eye contact as charged with anger and passion as this one. “You love me, you still love me. It’s all in your eyes. Why won’t you marry me?”

You wanted to curl into a ball and cry. Why did loving him have to be so difficult? Was love worth the fights, the tears and pain and loss of independence? Was loving him enough to keep you going? You were so tired of this back and forth with him. You’d never even talked about marriage before, having been too busy trying to keep any sort of relationship alive. Why would he do this to you?

As your limbs got heavier, you leaned forward and hugged him. You held him to yourself, soaking in his warmth and smell inside you for what would be the last time. You could not give up so much of yourself to sustain this love. Soon enough, there would be nothing more to give and the love would be dead.

“You need to let me go Christopher” You said to him, lips close to his ear. “You need to understand that love is only the beginning. I can’t keep doing this anymore. Please, just let me go.”

Chris hugged you tighter, his head resting over yours and heart beating strong beneath your hand. He was your night, full of twinkling stars and dark mysteries. But dawn was approaching fast, and you needed to bid goodbye to the moon to greet the sun that awaited you.

“Never.” He promised, “You are never leaving me again. I’ll fucking make sure of it.”

He picked you up suddenly, ignoring your protests as he carried you back into the bedroom. Kicking your bag aside, he dropped you on the bed, raising a finger to stop you. He took out the ring from his pocket, the very one you had refused this evening and held it to you.

“Put this on.” He ordered and you rubbed your eyes in exasperation.

“No.”

You both glared at each other, adrenaline coursing through your veins. Fighting with Chris had always been a thrill, more often than not ending with wild sex on any and all surfaces in sight. But today you were determined to end it. You’d not let yourself become weak at the sight of his cock.

“Okay then, you’ve left me no choice.” Chris said. He picked up his phone and tapped away on it, doing god knows what. You sighed, getting up and putting your stuff together again, ignoring his presence behind you. Chris threw his phone on the bed, looking stoically at you work. You were just folding the last of your clothes when your phone started buzzing. You ignored it for a minute, but it kept up, almost falling off the table with its vibrations.

“What the fuck” You gasped, looking at the hundreds of notifications pouring in as more followed. You quickly opened your Instagram to see you’d been tagged by Chris.

And she said YES!

Below that caption was a picture of the both of you from a couple months ago, cuddled up and smiling at each other.

Comments and likes from everyone were popping in, and soon enough, you saw your mother’s call. You stared at Chris, utterly in disbelief. What had he done?

“Try saying no now. You’d be the bitch who broke Chris Evans’s heart, the bitch who played him. Try walking in public between people who’d see you only as a slut and nothing more.”

Your world came crashing down. You were not some hotshot celebrity like Chris. You were just a girl trying to live her life the best way she knew how to, and how it ended up entangled with this man you’d never understand. Even if you shouted from the rooftops the truth of today, no one would believe you. Chris’s fans would tear you to shreds, destroy your life with their mean comments and attacks. And your family would not be spared either. They’ll be exposed to a celebrity scandal, dragged through the mud along with your good name.

“Oh god Chris, what have you done?” You choked out, falling to your knees. He came before you, gently caressing your head before kneeling in front of you. Cupping your face, he kissed you deep and hard, countering your hate with his love that hit you like your own kryptonite.

“I told you. I told you I’ll never let you leave.” He breathed against your mouth, pulling you closer. You dug your nails in his arms, hurting him with the hurt he just caused you, but he didn’t even flinch.

“You’re a monster” You said, chest heaving with emotions.

“Yes, I am. But you know what darling?” He said sweetly, “Even after this, you still love me. I am a monster, but I am a monster you created and one you love.”

You ended up on the bed, sprawled underneath him again. Even with icy hate in your eyes, your heart burned with love for him. It was unnatural, it was chemical and wrong. And yet, it was your reality. He was yours, no matter what he did. And you were his, regardless of every protest that you ever made.

“Now, I’ll ask this one more time. Will you marry me?” He asked softly, looking at you like you were all he ever saw.

“Yes” You breathed, watching silently as he slipped the ring on your finger and kissed it. Meeting your eyes, he settled over your body, his arousal pulsing over your thigh. Sealing the deal with a kiss, Chris went to remove your shirt.

“Then let’s celebrate. After we’re done, we can call our families with the good news.”

#chris evans x reader #dark!chris evans x reader #chris x reader #dark!chris evans #chris evans #chris evans rpf

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whereflowersbloom · 4 years

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Sweet sin.

She sensed his presence in her vicinity before he actually approaches her, the way she always has ever since she locked her eyes on him. Raven detected a shift in the air and then he is at her back, her skin immediately feels him breathing on her long neck. Her shoulders sag in relief but she does not dare turn around, in case it will shatter everything.

There is something different about him. But then again, she supposed there is something different about them now as well. "Raven” her breath hitches as he pronounces her name like a prayer, quietly and her eyes fill inexplicably. There are suddenly a thousand things to tell him, as there always is when they spend time apart. And it had been an unconscionably long time for her liking.

He abruptly grabbed her tiny hand to pull her closer to him and she exhaled. "Brother in law.”

The soft exhale through his nose indicates his arrogant smile. They stand there completely still, as if making sure the other is truly there before Jason shifts his weight from one foot to the other and bends his head to speak to directly to her small ear. “Could you get away tonight?" Jason whispered eagerly, breath hot against her throat. She so many questions but realized it is not the time, and they have to be careful, there’s no handmaidens or servants around fortunately, but one must be wary at all times, so she swallowed hard and nodded instead.

There is a window in the room, facing the setting sun. It bathes the room in golden light, seemingly setting her dark hair on shining like night sky. The light makes her skin look luminescent, soft and playful and perfect. And he wished they were alone, to let his hands and lips roam freely the smooth skin he has kissed innumerable times, yet he couldn’t get enough. He can’t help it as his left hand settle on her waist discreetly, pulling her closer. His thumb grazes the underside of her breast, because he is wicked and can’t think to stop himself. She silently removes his hand from the side of her breast, and his eyes spot the exquisite gold band in her ring finger, reminding him at the eyes of the world she was not his. He knitted his brows instinctively, in frustration, wild anger.

Wide dark blue eyes, almost violet, those enigmatic orbs he adores lock with his, and he can tell the exact moment when comprehension settles in, when she understands just how much he hates being forced to share her with his own brother. He suddenly feels he’s too greedy, burdening her with this knowledge. But he wants her like no other, and she was belonged to him in ways his brother would never have her.

“Come to my room when your husband is asleep, little bird.” He waited for her to nod again, subtly glancing at the corners in case there’s a spy or unwanted witness and then he is gone in an instant. They couldn’t let anyone suspect. She held in the gasp that almost escapes her mouth when he is no longer pressed against her back, pushes down the urge to whirl around and run after him and profess her longing for him all those weeks he was gone. Raven Wayne stands tall, looks down the corridor for her husband. Richard was too concentrated reading a book when he half consciously catches her eye, smiling at her immediately. Sweet and distant Richard never said a word about her close relationship with his younger brother. Jason.

~~~

Jason couldn’t stay anymore, having her so close in proximity, yet so very far away, left Jason filled with something like despair. Suddenly, he couldn’t bear to watch her anymore. He ached to touch her, publicly claim her as his. It had been so long, and yet the memory of her under his fingers occupied his every thought.

Contrary to popular belief, Jason Wayne was not accustomed to sharing the bed of beautiful women. Not the whole night at least.

Being a loyal customer to the finest brothels in Rome, he had learned that money only granted you a certain amount of time and services and cuddling your beloved of the night in the aftermath of lovemaking wasn't one of them. Not when she was married to your older brother. There had been other women, of course, before her, the world wasn't divided between noble ladies and whores, after all. But Jason had never spent the entire night through the morning with one of his conquests. There had been kisses, primitive passion, and many goodbyes. He was a warrior of the nation. But there was no other like her. His little Raven. She was different in a very unique way.

He wasn’t granted the privilege to spend lazy mornings with his secret lover, explore her body until he was terribly exhausted and make her scream his name until there was no doubt she was only his. That wasted honorable and admirable Richard’s right. It makes his skin burn with anger, blood rising to the surface. His hand itches towards his sword, closer every second, to cut anyone who was close enough neck and he decided training with Timothy outside for most of the day, would relieve some pressure, to avoid the house and the people within it. Specifically his brother and wife together.

~~~

Later that night after welcoming his brother in law back. Raven slides carefully out from under the white sheets, not glancing at the husband she is leaving in his bed alone. Their bed, she reminder herself. No, she thinks sternly, its his. There is a moment when she paused, almost turns to look at Richard with guilt and regret. Sweet and kindhearted Richard, who smiled cheerfully whenever she walked into a room and kissed her tenderly as if she was made of glass. In that moment, she considers what her life has become, what she has become, and wonders what is going to come next. If only she had married Jason, but her betrothal had been decided before he came back from France, before they had time to suggest a different suitor. Her eyes flutter closed, begging one day God forgives her for her adulterous sins. She leaves in the silence of the moonlight. In minutes, she’s at the massive wooden door of his bedroom. Their bedroom she said in her mind.

“I do not think I was followed.” she admitted nervous even after numerous nocturnal encounters. She finds herself unease somehow, unable to determine why exactly. Her lover seemed different, more serious, as if he had matured while he was away from her. Raven remembers the young boy he was once dressed in red tackling her to the ground playfully, childhood playmates, eyes still full of hope and naivety. The promise of a future they could choose a partner, no worries or concerns for political marriages or brutal and devastating wars. She had a spouse now. His brother.

There is a moment of silence before he sighed “Its not the first. I trust you were careful enough, as always.” He made a gesture inviting her to sit beside him with his open arms. She obliges, her mind imagining the things they would do in that bed, noting how his gaze never leaves her, drinking her up as she is drinking him. They say nothing for minutes. Leaning in, Raven kissed his cheek affectionately and his hand tightened on her hip possesively.

She saw the shudder in his throat as he swallowed. He tilted his head down, towards hers, until their foreheads leaned together and she could feel his nose to the side of hers, his breath on her mouth. That was not new, either, but nevertheless something in her belly fluttered after being weeks apart. “Did you miss me sweetheart?” He rasped, and the crack in his voice stirs her stomach and she clings to his neck like it’s the only thing she can hold onto, before he leaves for a battle or under his father’s command.

Raven gave a solemn nod and set her hands on his broad shoulder. She dutifully closed her eyes, when he kissed her slowly but with ardor at the same time, and she kissed back giving into the pleasure of his mouth, feeling his lips give way just a little under the pressure. Excitement burned through her veins once more, to be in her beloved’s arms once again. She tried to mimic the slow press of his lips, her fingers digging into his shoulders. Her heart was pounding. Then his thumb ran down her throat, almost to her collarbone, and Raven gasped against his mouth. “As always, my love.”

“You’re playing with Fire, sister in law.” He muttered smirking at her mischievously. He felt fever mad with endless want for her. His skin must be as warm as hers. Raven burning him up, both of them burning each other up.

“Then burn me with your touch, Jason.” She whispered with heat and desire, pressing a hand to his solid chest. “I never wanted his heart, I wanted yours.” Forgive me Richard for I am falling into sin again with your brother. But I cannot say wholeheartedly I regret it, nonetheless.

@ravenfan1242 @niahti I blame youuuuuu 🙈😂😂😂

Sneak peek 👀👀👀👀 🙈🙈🙈

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william70gorman-blog · 5 years

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gerardowen50 · 7 years

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killingthebuddha · 7 years

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“…the attendant phenomena of eclipses, solar and lunar, from immersion to emersion, abatement of wind, transit of shadow, taciturnity of winged creatures, emergence of nocturnal or crepuscular animals, persistence of internal light, obscurity of terrestrial waters, pallor of human beings.” –James Joyce Ulysses (1922)

“We were the world’s dead people rotating and orbiting around and around, embedded in the planet’s crust, while the Earth rolled down.” –Annie Dillard, “Total Eclipse” (1982)

“Leonard Nimoy: A solar eclipse. The cosmic ballet goes on.

Fellow Passenger: Does anyone want to switch seats?”

—The Simpsons, “Marge vs. the Monorail” (1993)

Let’s begin with one of the most famous examples, March 1st 1504: that Genoan sailor, navigator, epistler, propagandist, colonizer, self-promoter, rapist, murderer and genius Christopher Columbus supposedly found himself in a difficult situation. Initially welcomed by the Taino of this Caribbean Eden called Jamaica, relations with the natives had soured as the Spaniards indulged their every desire upon the islanders, with no concern for either Christ or consent, thus setting the template for how this experiment called America would be marked from its earliest days. And so, the Taino Cacique rightly ordered his people to halt delivery of provisions to the Christians as punishment for the pillaging and rape which had marked Columbus’s tenure on the island. With tawny skin stretched tight across rib cages, and with sunken yellow eyes and yellow cheeks, the Spanish began to starve, here in this lush utopia that they transformed into a fetid prison ship.

But, if the accounts of the navigator’s son Ferdinand are to be believed, his father was nothing if not an ingenious man, and though he was a medieval-minded mystical visionary who imagined the world as a pear-shaped breast with paradise at the nipple, who searched for Indian gold to fund the crusaders’ war against the Saracens, and who parsed scripture for evidence of the apocalypse’s date, he was also a partisan of astrolabe and compass, and one mad enough to no longer hug the coast as he sailed to undiscovered kingdoms. And so in his time of desperation, he turned not to his beloved Revelation, which predicted wars between Gog and Magog, nor the matrices of kabbalah or the totalizing ardor of the alchemist, but rather to the German astronomer Regiomantus’ Ephemeris.

In that book of sober science he read that that very month, that veritable day, that immaculate hour the moon was to descend into the shadowy blackness of Earth’s umbra so that it would appear that the satellite itself was to disappear, after turning an inky blood red. And so, not in spite of the fact that he was girded with this empirical knowledge but because of it, Columbus, with great duplicity, affected the persona not of the learned mathematical scholar but of the prophetic magus (though both are privy to the luxuries of certainty). Embracing the new learning of the Renaissance, but masking it as magic, Columbus told the Cacique that–lest the natives reestablish their life-giving trade with the sailors–the Christian god would extinguish the moon and loose the blood-dimmed tide over this isle so full of noises. And like Prospero with his Caliban, these honey-sweetened threats were affective, for upon the lunar eclipse it was “with great howling and lamentation they came running from every direction to the ships, laden with provisions, praying the Admiral to intercede by all means with God on their behalf; that he might not visit his wrath upon them.”

It’s a hell of a story. One of the many mythic legends about the disgraced man who found some islands off the coast of Asia and lived to see another man give his name to them. Columbus with his disappeared moon belongs to the same genre that includes stories such as Cortez being welcomed as that eastern pale-face Quetzalcoatl by a humiliated Montezuma still resplendent in panther-skin robes and feathered headdress; or the account of some unscrupulous Dutch real estate traders inaugurating a venerable New York tradition of grifting when they tricked the Lenape into parting with Manhattan for $24 and some beads. That template–of simple, naïve, child-like (yet somehow bloodthirsty) natives tricked by the cagey and treacherous (yet somehow admirable) Europeans became our favored script of first contact. Never mind the specifics of whatever actually happened that half-millennium ago on that verdant island. For after all, Columbus was a man who at several points in his letters and diaries emphasized that Taino and Carib and Arawak spoke an incomprehensible babble of tongues, and yet he could somehow discern that amongst each other they communicated the convenient message of “Come and see the men who have come from the sky. Bring them victuals and drink.”

Washington Irving, who was as responsible as any for constructing the enduring legend of Columbus (including the fallacy that he was the first to demonstrate the sphericalness of the Earth), wrote that the Indians regarded Columbus “with awe and reverence, as a man in the peculiar favor and confidence of the Deity, since he knew upon earth what was passing in the heavens.” Sleight of hand and chicanery; confidence man, medicine man, bullshit artist: Americans have always loved these sort of stories about Columbus, for though he was a mystical-minded Catholic visionary, this Protestant country has seemingly never had much of an issue with its name being an Italian one which ends in a vowel (true whether it’s America or Columbia).

Mark Twain, in his own act of jingoistic trickery, converted Columbus into a sober and rational New England engineer, and the Indians into ancient Britons, in his 1889 A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. There, Henry Morgan of Hartford tricks Merlin, Arthur, and the rest of the assembled court by performed a trick identical to the one Columbus pulled on the Jamaicans. Twain writes that, “the eclipse had scared the British world almost to death; that while it lasted the whole country, from one end to the other, was in a pitiable state of panic, and the churches, hermitages, and monkeries overflowed with praying and weeping poor creatures,” and so Samuel Clemens performed that alchemy which transformed Arawak into Anglo-Saxon, a nice little bit of confidence trickery in its own right, even more fully conflating our first discovery with the United States’ independence from a barbaric Old World.

This Columbus, and his myth as constructed by Irving, or Twain, or New England epic poet Joel Barlow, or for that matter two centuries of American public education, casts the explorer not as the representative of those most sovereign Catholic royals Ferdinand and Isabella, but rather as a stolid advocate for republican values, where the eclipse legend is just one more example of Columbus’s Yankee ingenuity, before there were Yankees. But that Columbus, or Morgan, used an eclipse to befuddle the primitives who threatened them is not incidental. In both stories, whether truth or fiction, accurate or exaggerated, the eclipse is itself centrally important precisely because it is an eclipse. That is because within the eclipse’s shadow there is the uncomfortable union of science and superstition, reason and magic, the discord between what we intellectually understand and what we experientially know.

For the astronomer, little is more certain than an eclipse, a matter of mathematical regularity. And yet what could seem more terrifying in its apocalyptic imagery than the literal devouring of the sun, the extinguishment of light, the banishment of the day? That they are regular and (to us) a completely explicable phenomenon drains these events of none of their power and significance. Eclipses are themselves generally mundane, between two and seven a year, if rare over populated areas; they are explained through the almost heroically simple to understand movement of either the Earth or moon directly in front of the sun. And yet the eclipse itself becomes a potent occasion. For though the physics of the whole thing are basic enough to explain to an elementary school student with a basketball, a baseball, and a flashlight, there is strange prophetic majesty implicit in viewing the event itself, as when that old cynic Twain writes, “In the stillness and the darkness, realization soon began to supplement knowledge. The mere knowledge of a fact is pale; but when you come to realize your fact, it takes on color.” The tension in those old accounts is between the “mere knowledge” held by the superior intelligence of the interloper, when placed in contrast to “realization.”

What dwells in the shadow of the penumbra is predictability wed to the remarkable, for eclipses are remarkable not in spite of their predictability, but in part because of them. The narrative thrust of all such accounts as those I’ve mentioned is the disjunction between those who can predict and those who can’t – but the universal existential incongruity of a disappearing sun is that which makes the narrative possible. Facts are pale, experience has color, and if an almanac is a straightforward book it can sometimes take on the feeling of kabbalah. The navigator, or Connecticut engineer, can manipulate using their astronomy tables, but their success is predicated on the drama of the spectacle itself. Literal knowledge of when the eclipse is going to happen only takes Columbus so far, for the whole gambit to work is implicit in the undeniable drama of the thing itself. Mathematics can give us the pale fact of when and how an eclipse is to occur, but our own eyes imbue the event with that terrifying sense of the sacred, when in the sixth hour “there was a darkness over all the earth until the ninth hour. And the sun was darkened, and the veil of the temple was rent.”

One shouldn’t think, however, that tricking the locals with a light show that you yourself didn’t actually produce is limited only to Spanish colonists and Hartford time travellers. Implicit in those sorts of stories is the arrogance of modernity, the preposition that just a little bit of star-gazing knowledge makes someone capable of flummoxing the rubes with some conveniently timed astronomical phenomena. But these sorts of stories actually go back deep into history, for one shouldn’t forget that though the Chaldeans are synonymous with magic, they dotted the lush fields of Babylon with observatories as well. Say what you will about their errors in modeling the solar system, if the ancients were capable of anything it was predicting the motion of those celestial spheres with a surprising accuracy. Indeed, it is precisely because of a similar trick, if done for more noble reasons, that we’re able to know the earliest exact date in human history: May 28, 585 B.C.E.

On that particular Ionian spring day, an armistice was reached between the Medes and Lydians, who until that hour had been embroiled in furious conflict for five bloody years. Thales of Miletus, the first of the pre-Socratic philosophers, and, as that tribe was apt to be, remembered for his aphoristic pronouncements, which have the strange quality of being literally wrong while also somehow completely correct (in Thales’s case this was his contention: that all of reality was made of water) used those famed Babylonian star charts to predict the exact hour at which a solar eclipse was to occur. The Medes and Lydians ignored foolish aquaphilic Thales with his Chaldean charts, until on that predicted May 28,th when Herodotus recorded that “during the battle the day was suddenly turned to night. Thales of Miletus had foretold this loss of daylight to the Ionians,” and so the philosopher was celebrated as one who, through casting darkness, was able paradoxically to bring peace, as the sons of both Media and Lydia could once again live as brothers under the specter of a dark sun. But as miraculous as that blessed moment of peace may have been, what’s even more incredible is that Thales was forever able to mark this specific May 28th as the first day in our human calendar that we can know and identify with any exactitude. There is no range of dates on which the ceasefire could have occurred, it did not happen on the 27th, nor the 29th – the disappearing sun ensures that it only could have been on the day that Thales said it would be. Exact dates of any event before that Greek spring must be forever unknown, as for that matter must the majority of significant dates after that May 28th, at least until relatively recently. We can never know what the exact date was on which Ashurbanipal first oversaw the foundations of Nineveh, or when Siddhartha sat up from the Bodhi tree, or when young Alexander pressed stylus to wax at the side of Aristotle in the Lyceum, or for that matter when Christ screamed out his last moment of doubt (even if the Gospels tell us that the son’s darkness rose a darkened sun).

But because the spheres move in their orderly ellipticals, with epicycle within epicycle, and all retrograde motion carefully circumscribed by immutable and elegant physics from Copernicus, to Kepler, to Einstein, we know with exact certainty that date a half-millennia before Christ when those soldiers cast aside their swords. Laplace’s demon set that clock billions of years ago, and whether you’re an adherent of Calvin or Newton the result is the same: the sun had no choice but to disappear that May 28th, and because Thales knew that, we can forever remember that first date with as much certainty as one knows a birthday, or an anniversary, or the day a loved one died, or the day someone put down the bottle, or the day of a graduation, or a first kiss. Only the date of our individual death is forever unknown to us, but all eclipses are forever inscribed and certain, both those that have come before and those yet to occlude. Thales, by the measurement of eclipse, started human history by giving us certainty; through the myth of the swallowed sun he initiated the recording of fact. The date of that sacred armistice is as immutable and certain as April 15th, 1865, or December 7th 1941, or November 22nd, 1963, or September 11th, 2001. That exact hour from the Peloponnesian War was the first such moment that could be definite in the same way as those other dates; because Thales knew of that eclipse, and so we know of Thales.

But just as that first definite date merely preceded the multitude of the rest, that Greek eclipse was only one of many which so starkly intervened within human history (and not even the first). Eclipses’ shadows are cast across history, across myth, and across literature – as with all things human, these categories are much more permeable and interrelated than might be first assumed. There was an eclipse in 1302 BCE where a Chinese inscription painted on the back of a turtle shell records that “flames ate the sun,” a 763 BCE eclipse which coincided with an uprising in the Assyrian city of Ashur (with a tablet indicating that the two events were conflated); there was one which lasted a little under five minutes in 1133 and marked the death of Henry I of England and was experienced as “hideous darkness,” and the lunar eclipse of May 22, 1453, when the Ottomans were battering down the walls of Constantinople, a blood moon marking the final demise of the great Byzantium.

As if the collapse of the remainder of the eastern Roman empire and the routing of Orthodox Christianity by Mehmed II wasn’t dramatic enough, May 29th, 1919, saw an eclipse that demonstrated an even more radical reshuffling of reality. The Experimentum crucis of two observational teams deployed to both Brazil and an island off the coast of Africa used the shadow of the event to compare measurements of the deviation of light through the curvature of space, confirming Einstein’s General theory of Relativity. Constantinople becoming Istanbul may have been punctuated with that lunar eclipse of 1453, but the solar eclipse of 1919 transformed space into time (at least in our understanding of the universe), with the New York Times reporting “Light All Askew in the Heavens.” That eclipse provided the opportunity for astronomers like Arthur Eddington, making his observations on a colonial African cocoa plantation, to calculate the slight difference between where stars appeared to be in the heavens before and during the eclipse, and to thus observe the way in which light traversed through the portion of the space-time continuum more radically curved by the sun’s massive gravitational field. The Times of London’s headline was “Newtonian Ideas Overthrown,” and indeed Einstein’s was a strange theurgy, which defeated classical physics and forever-unified time and space into one unit, whose alteration was the origin of something as fundamental as gravity. Such an eclipse was the modern version of another one two millennia before, whose exact date we don’t know, but which supposedly marked the crucifixion of Christ. Like Einstein, he was a Jew who challenged a traditional order, and much as Einstein permanently combined our ideas of space and time, so the idea of Christ would unify matter and spirit (at least for those who adhere to the Nicene Creed).

Christ’s eclipse belongs as much to mythic time as it does historical, but the connection of his death upon the cross to the movements of the moon and sun demonstrates the pagan core to all faiths, which still endure even through the Abrahamic religions. Theology might be of the head, but faith must always be of the body, and the sublime wisdom of paganism–that the sun and moon, seasons and weather, animals and terrain indelibly mark how we experience both the profane and the sacred–can’t help but find a home within the great desert religions of the Axial Age. In Surah 75:7 of the Qur’an, the prophet Muhammad said of eclipses that, “These signs which Allah sends do not occur because of the life or death of somebody,” and yet tradition holds that an eclipse marked the birth of the Prophet, and some Muslims believe an eclipse will mark the arrival of the Mahdi. The rhythms of the heavens and the cycles of nature are a potent force, still providing the most majestic experience available to human sense, and we can condescend to the ancient Chinese fearing that the sun had been devoured by a dragon, or the Aztec’s Black Sun when feather-plumed Quetzalcoatl made his western exit in that passage set into the gloaming meadows of Dusk’s Kingdom, but the emotions that conflate an eclipse with the execution of God as man, or which mark the birth of the final prophet, remind us that we must be humble before our pagan ancestors as they were before the disappearing moon and sun.

I am not claiming that Christianity and Islam are as “irrational” as those archaic religions that preceded them, nor am I saying that they are all simply reducible to one another. I respect the majesty of the eclipse too much; if I observe a pagan element running through the great monotheisms as clearly as the moon runs between the Earth and sun, it’s not to denigrate Abraham’s progeny, but to note that all of us are the progeny of Adam, and he was firstly one who dwelled within the temple of nature. And as day first needed to be made distinct from night, as both the greater and lesser nights had to be distinguished from one another, the eclipse briefly confuses and comingles them, providing us a few minutes of knowing what it was like when creation had yet to be fully created.

And not just creation, but millennium as well. Creation is simply apocalypse played in reverse, and both raveling and unraveling are intimately connected as times where the order of things is upended, the world turned upside down (or more appropriately the sun extinguished). Whether Christian or Cannibal, Puritan or pagan, the disordering of nature marks both genesis and revelation, and if an eclipse gives us a view of that first day when the crystalline spheres were initially put into motion, then it also affords us a glimpse of when those planets will run off their tracks, crash into each other, and all shall be final. Supreme Protestant though he may have been, the poet John Milton understood that nature and nature’s God are more synonymous than not, and the deep-time wisdom of paganism is threaded through his verse. Indeed astronomy, though defined by objective, empirical measurement, and practiced with calculation and observation, is in some sense the most “pagan” of sciences; for like primordial religion, astronomy, perennially reminds us of the grandeur of the universe and of our own insignificance within it. Milton, perhaps because he met Galileo during his Italian tour, deeply understood that the universe’s and God’s grandeur are as equivalent, in both sublimity and terror. He was well versed in Ptolemaism, Copernicanism, diurnal theory, and conjectures on the plurality of worlds, and furthermore in his Paradise Lost he has Adam discuss such issues with the archangel Raphael.

In the first book of that epic he equates the fall of the “dread commander” Lucifer, the “morning star,” with the disappearing sun. Cast into perdition, yet “his form had yet not lost/All her original brightness, nor appeared/Less than Archangel ruined, and the excess/Of glory obscured.” Milton compares the towering fallen angel to “when the sun new-risen/Looks through the horizontal misty air/Shorn of his beams, or from behind the moon/In dim eclipse disastrous twilight sheds/On half the nations.” An eclipse, like the archangels exile from heaven, may be foreknown to the omniscient God; and Lucifer caste from paradise, like an eclipse, is also a terrifying vision. The eclipse signifies the union of both the regularized almanac predictability of the calendar with the terrifying spectacle of the very sun itself seeming to go extinct (if for a few minutes). Darkness falls out of light, like Lucifer cast from heaven, and for but a few minutes we experience apocalypse, even if intellectually we know it’s but the moon passing before the sun.

Twilight might shed on half the nations, but eventually she shall shed on all of them. This month it sheds on only one nation. Excitement mounts for August 21st, 2017’s Great American Eclipse, which will first be seen in Salem, Oregon at 10:15 in the morning, for close to two minutes. From the rainy green-leafed Cascades of the northwest, the path of totality will burn eastward across the badlands of Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, the prairies of Nebraska, Kansas, Iowa, the expanses of Missouri, the hills of southern Illinois and the ancient Appalachians of Kentucky, and through the crucible of the Confederacy in Tennessee, Georgia, the pines and cedars of North Carolina, and finally the low country of South Carolina. It marks the first time a complete eclipse has been visible in a path of totality across the entire continent-sized empire of America since June 8th, 1918, when European trenches still convulsed with the wretched dying, the Bolsheviks consolidated power in Petrograd, and army infirmaries started to fill with patients stricken with the early dull ache of the Spanish influenza, when confirmation of Einstein’s alchemy of space and time through another eclipse still lay a year off. The Great American Eclipse’s path of totality will take exactly one hour, thirty-three minutes, and sixteen-point-eight seconds to diagonally burn eastward across the continent from the Pacific to the Atlantic, entering and exiting the continent like a bullet cutting through flesh.

That a total eclipse is visible in any given specific, geographic location is rare. Though a huge swath of the continental United States will be privy to August’s eclipse, most of us will only be able to view a partial one. Take, as only one example, the city of Los Angeles. Since the United States of America became a nation, the city of Los Angeles has never once been witness to a total solar eclipse. During the colonial era, the area were Los Angeles would one day spread outward was only privy to a complete solar eclipse five time; in 1557, 1623, 1632, 1679, and for the last time in 1724. Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo staked a claim for Southern California by the Kingdom of Spain in 1542 (memories of Columbus’s trick perhaps still fresh in conquistador minds), but no Europeans reached that coastal basin hemmed in by those snow-capped peaks until 1769, and a permanent mission wasn’t established until 1771. That means that absolutely nobody of European, Asian, or African descent has ever seen a complete solar eclipse within what would be L.A. The city has seen colonization by the Spanish, Mexican independence, the California Republic, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, the discovery of oil, the construction of the aqueduct that made the arid desert fertile, the Olympics, and the rise of Hollywood. From the eighteenth-century when the settlement was populated by some forty odd Pobladores, to the almost four million inhabitants who live in the city today, Los Angeles is a consummately American place; city as metonymy for the country’s history from squabbling colonial outposts to massive, diverse, complex, and contradictory nation. But the last time a total eclipse was viewable within the valley it was the home to only Tongva and Chumash.

If you want to see a total solar eclipse within Los Angeles city limits, you’ll have to wait until after the year 3000, as NASA’s calculator records no total eclipses for the rest of the third millennium within L.A. However, citizens should be pleased to learn they may be able to see a partial annular eclipse within the city in 2121, 2711, or 2876, at which point it’s hard to know whether there still will be a Los Angeles within which to view an eclipse (though perhaps the city will sprawl far enough out in the meantime that it will encompass regions where the phenomenon may be observable, and Angelinos will be lucky enough to see an eclipse before those predicted dates). The point remains the same however: Los Angeles (or anywhere) can be as a memento mori when placed in contrast to the long planning of the heavens, for the cosmos cares not about Spanish colonization, Mexican independence, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, oil, aqueducts, the Olympics or Hollywood – an eclipse’s schedule works on a different scale, whether we’re there to witness it or not. It’s very possible, as the vagaries of history go, that Los Angeles may have been born and pass entirely within the time frame of there being no visible total eclipses within the region it currently occupies. My hometown of Pittsburgh has never had a total eclipse in the entire history of European settlement, it will only have her first on September 12th, 2444, at which point I’ll assume that I’ll be too infirm to enjoy it. Vanity of vanities, veil of shadows, and all the rest. An eclipse hurries for no man.

Where then is our theory of the eclipse? Not the mechanism, but the grappling with the significance, not the science, but the poetry? We still fear that dragon swallowing the sun; it is primal and adrenal. Not of the mind but the endocrine gland, not of contemplation, but fear. Beautiful, majestic, and terrifying, for Apollo seems to still his axle. A reminder not that the universe can die, but that she can hide her face from us and be none the worse for wear. We can watch with our goggles and cards with pins punched in them, but an eclipse in its authenticity, and its explicable magic and its inexplicable regularized prosaicness haunts us still, with evocations of the sublime. When standing out in whatever field, or hill, or skyscraper you choose to spend your few minutes looking at the sun be devoured on the 21st, remember that from the beginning until the end, eclipses continue on and on whether we’re there to witness them or not, and that may be their most important lesson.

In what is possibly both the dawn and the dusk of the short Anthropocene, the eclipse is like a skull in a Dutch Old Master’s painting, a reminder that nature still wins, even if we can predict what nature does. We may be destroying our own “pale blue dot,” as Carl Sagan called the Earth, but we’re thankfully still small in contrast to the cosmos. All of our technology can’t prevent an eclipse, even if we’ve found ways to alter the very weather, to raise the sea levels and burst the banks of our rivers, even if we find it possible to erase Columbus’ Jamaica, or our Los Angeles, or any of our other places from the map. In the past, eclipses terrified because they were unpredictable, and they still terrify for they are the nature that we cannot touch, reminding us that even in the Anthropocene we are defenseless against the turning gyers of heaven. In his Metamorphoses, Ovid’s Apollo asks Phaeton: “Suppose the chariot of the sun were given you, what would you do?” Suppose indeed, thankfully it’s a question we can never answer; better to consider Nietzsche’s interrogative “What will we do as the Earth is set loose from the sun?” for we ultimately never have any real say in what heavenly bodies move in front of other heavenly bodies. A type of scientific wisdom crucial for keeping us small, a strange consolation in a world where we’ve been able to alter the very weather: there are some things of this world that we cannot alter. Leave Dyson spheres for the aliens circling around KIC 846 2852, even with our hubris and our arrogance we cannot smash the crystalline spheres, and thankfully the Anthropocene ends at the border of our atmosphere (minus some trash on the moon passing in front of the sun).

The Arawak were terrified of the eclipse because they couldn’t predict it and Columbus could; as descendants of Columbus we should be terrified precisely because of the eclipse’s predictability, because the lesson it conveys is that in our own insignificance the eclipse goes on, whether we’re here to view it or not. No magicians are controlling the eclipse, least of all ourselves, and in the scope of deep time our ability to predict the calendar of eclipses between now and the billions of years hence when the Earth is engulfed in the supernovae of that sometimes bashful sun only serves to remind us of how very small we are. The final lesson indeed is that the that eclipse was destined to happen on February 29th, 1504, whether Columbus was there to see it or not, as indeed the Los Angeles eclipses of 2121, or 2711, or 2876 are to happen, regardless of us. The final trick is that we realize the heavens turn without our intervention, and that we must be wise masters of predicting our own obsolescence.

We are not so different, the Taino and us, both penitents in a world not of our own making, whose script was written long before we were born and will continue to be acted long after we are dead; a script in which we are less than bit players, though our roles must still be ever important to us. Ultimately we must learn that simply because we can predict an eclipse we have no power before it, because in front of the incomparable majesty of the very universe we are but all standing on our Jamaican beach, mere fact no balm before the infinite sublimity of the everything which is not us.

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