#hyades cluster

[meme-xx]

NO WAR

Moon and Hyades (Aug. 11, 2023)

[the-wolf-and-moon]

Hyades Star Cluster

[quiltofstars]

Aldebaran (α Tauri, orange star, upper right) and some stars of the Hyades // Guillermo Cervantes Mosqueda

The name Aldebaran comes from the Arabic al Dabarān, meaning "the follower" because it seems to follow the Pleiades.

[vireosy]

Hyades

// Art Fight attack on Frostoniaaaaa

[redacted-metallum]

Bitches will make it so that you cannot forget Carcosa, where black stars hang in the heavens, where the shadows of men's thoughts lengthen in the afternoon when the twin suns sink into the Lake of Hali and be like "can't help being a Taurus ♉💫💛!"

[anothercloudynight]

Hyades (star cluster) & Aldebaran with clouds

Constellation Taurus

Distance: 153 ly

DSLR Canon Rebel T3i

[calorionsstarchive]

Hyades (mel 25)

[thewinedarksea]

myth moodboards: the pleiades

in greek mythology, the pleiades were seven sister-nymphs, companions of artemis, the goddess of the hunt. together with their sisters, the hyades, they were called the atlantides, dodonides, or nysiades, nursemaids and teachers of the infant dionysus. the pleiades were thought to have been translated to the night sky as a cluster of stars.

requested by anon

[apod]

2023 December 28

Jupiter and the Geminid Image Credit & Copyright: Gaurav Singh

Explanation: For a brief moment, this brilliant fireball meteor outshone Jupiter in planet Earth's night. The serendipitous image was captured while hunting meteors under cold Canadian skies with a camera in timelapse mode on December 14, near the peak of the Geminid meteor shower. The Geminid meteor shower, asteroid 3200 Phaethon's annual gift, always arrives in December. Dust shed along the orbit of the mysterious asteroid causes the meteor streaks, as the vaporizing grains plow through our fair planet's upper atmosphere at 22 kilometers per second. Of course Geminid shower meteors appear to radiate from a point in the constellation of the Twins. That's below and left of this frame. With bright Jupiter on the right, also in the December night skyview are the Pleiades and Hyades star clusters.

∞ Source: apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap231228.html

[spacewonder19]

Closest star cluster to the Sun: The Hyades

[meme-xx]

NO WAR

Moon and Hyades cluster (Oct. 31, 2023)

[just--space]

M44: The Beehive Cluster : A mere 600 light-years away, M44 is one of the closest star clusters to our solar system. Also known as the Praesepe or the Beehive cluster its stars are young though, about 600 million years old compared to our Sun's 4.5 billion years. Based on similar ages and motion through space, M44 and the even closer Hyades star cluster in Taurus are thought to have been born together in the same large molecular cloud. An open cluster spanning some 15 light-years, M44 holds 1,000 stars or so and covers about 3 full moons (1.5 degrees) on the sky in the constellation Cancer. Visible to the unaided eye, M44 has been recognized since antiquity. Described as a faint cloud or celestial mist long before being included as the 44th entry in Charles Messier's 18th century catalog, the cluster was not resolved into its individual stars until telescopes were available. A popular target for modern, binocular-equipped sky gazers, the cluster's few yellowish tinted, cool, red giants are scattered through the field of its brighter hot blue main sequence stars in this telescopic group snapshot. Dramatic diffraction spikes highlighting the brighter cluster members were created with string crossed in front of the telescope's objective lens. via NASA

[talonabraxas]

The origin and meaning of the Taurus Symbol

In astrology the Taurus symbol is a bull. Taurus is associated with beauty, sensuality and an artistic nature. Other Taurean characteristics include steadfastness, strength, hard work, patience, dependability, and stubbornness! Taurus rules the neck, shoulders, the throat, voice, and the throat chakra in the body.

Taurus is the fixed earth sign and it’s probably the most down to earth of zodiac signs. That said, there is also a deeply spiritual side to this sign. Esoterically Taurus is associated with the opening of the third eye and with enlightenment.

The Constellation of Taurus

It’s commonly believed that the Taurus Symbol comes from the constellation of Taurus. The stars are supposed to form the shape of a bull’s head and forequarters. But when you look at it, it isn’t easy to see the shape of a bull. So the Taurus symbol probably represents something much deeper than a mere visual similarity. (Also see constellation vs zodiac sign )

The constellation of Taurus is very large with two well-known star clusters: the Hyades and the Pleiades. The brightest star in Taurus is the red giant Aldebaran. It’s name comes from the Arabic word al-dabarān, which means “the follower”. Aldebaran is also called “the eye of the Bull“. In the Ancient Mystery schools this was called “the eye of illumination“. The reference to ‘followers’ and ‘illumination’ are another hint at a deep connection between Taurus and spiritual awakening.

Taurus Symbol in Esoteric Astrology

In Esoteric Astrology it says our soul’s journey begins in Aries as a point of light in the mind of God. In Taurus that point of light then becomes a single emanating beam of light. Accordingly, the energy of Life takes shape by moving into form in Taurus.

Taurus is the fixed earth sign. The earth element represents substance. In other words, the physical realm. In addition, ‘fixed’ energy forms conduits, supports or containers. Consequently the esoteric purpose of Taurus is to maintain an unswerving single-pointed focus on the material plane. Especially at this crucial early stage, when Life is moving outward on it’s journey into form. In short, the esoteric purpose of Taurus is to be a steadfast guiding light.

The four cardinal signs mark the beginning of a season. These are Aries (spring equinox), Cancer, Libra (autumn equinox) and Capricorn.

Next, the four fixed signs mark the peak of each season. Taurus is the fullness of spring. Leo is the height of summer. Scorpio is the peak of autumn and Aquarius marks the depths of winter.

Finally four mutable signs mark the changing seasons. In Gemini spring rolls into summer. Virgo watches summer turn into autumn. Sagittarius rolls autumn into winter and in Pisces winter rolls into spring. (These are the seasons in the Northern Hemisphere).

[baroquehedgewitch]

✨Astro Calendar 2023✨

⁺₊⋆ ☾ ⋆⁺₊ Lunar Events: ⁺₊⋆ ☾ ⋆⁺₊

● Jan 7th Full Moon in Cancer

○ Jan 22nd New Moon in Aquarius -  Lunar New Year

● Feb 6th Full Moon in Leo

○ Feb 20th New Moon in Pisces

● March 7th Full Moon in Virgo  

○ March 22nd New Moon in Leo

● April 6th Full Moon in Libra

○ April 20th New Moon in Aries 
◉ Total Eclipse

● May 6th Full Moon in Scorpio ◉ Total Eclipse

○ May 20th New Moon in Taurus

● June 4th Full Moon in Sagittarius

○ June 18th New Moon in Gemini

● July 3rd Full Moon in Capricorn

○ July 18th New Moon in Cancer

● Aug 2nd Full Moon in Aquarius - Supermoon

○ Aug 16th New Moon in Leo

● Aug 31st Full Moon in Pisces - Blue Moon

○ Sep 15th New Moon in Virgo

● Sep 29th Full Moon in Aries

○ Oct 15th New Moon in Libra ◉ Annular Eclipse

● Oct 29th Full Moon in Taurus ◉ Partial Eclipse

○ Nov 13th New Moon in Scorpio

● Nov 27th Full Moon in Gemini

○ Dec 13th New Moon in Sagittarius

● Dec 27th Full Moon in Cancer

⁺₊⋆ ☀︎ ⋆⁺₊ Wheel of the Year: ⁺₊⋆ ☀︎ ⋆⁺₊

✧˖°.☼.°˖✧Southern Hemisphere✧˖°.☼.°˖✧

Lammas/Lughnasadh  Feb 2nd

Mabon/Autumn Equinox  March 21st

Samhain May 1st

Yule/Winter Solstice Jun 22nd

Imbolc Aug 1st

Ostara/Spring Equinox Sep 23rd

Beltane Oct 31st

Litha/Summer Solstice Dec 22nd

✧˖°.☼.°˖✧Northern Hemisphere✧˖°.☼.°˖✧

Imbolc Feb 1st

Ostara/Spring Equinox March 30th

Beltane May 1st

Litha/Summer Solstice June 21st

Lammas/Lughnasadh Aug 1st

Mabon/Autumn Equinox Sep 22d

Samhain Oct 31st

Yule/Winter Solstice Dec 21st

˖⁺‧₊˚  ˚₊‧⁺˖Retrogrades & Directs: ˖⁺‧₊˚  ˚₊‧⁺˖

☿ Mercury

RX 29th Dec 2022 --> 19th Jan  //  20 Days

RX 21st April --> 15th May  //  23 Days

RX 24th Aug --> 16th Sep  //  23 Days

RX 13th Dec --> 2nd Jan 2024  //  19 Days

♁ Venus RX  23rd Jul --> 4th Sep  //  42 Days

♂️Mars RX 31st Oct 2022 --> 13th Jan  //  74 Days

♃ Jupiter RX 5th Sep --> 31st Dec  //  117 Days

♄ Saturn RX 18th June --> 4th Nov  // 139 Days

♅ Uranus

RX 24th Aug --> 23rd Jan  //  151 Days

RX 29th Aug --> 27th Jan 2024  //  151 Days

♆ Neptune RX 1st Jul --> 7th Dec  //  158 Days

♇ Pluto RX 2nd May --> 11th Oct  //  162 Days

* ⋆·˚ ༘ * 🔭 Astro Events to See:  * ⋆·˚ ༘ * 🔭

Quadrantids Meteor Shower 1st-7th Jan; Peaks on the 3rd. Full Moon

Venus Conjunct Saturn Jan 22nd

Venus Conjunct Jupiter March 1st

Eta Aquarids Meteor Shower 19th April -28th May. Strongest in Southern Hemisphere

Lyrids Meteor Shower 16th-25th April, peak on the 22nd/23rd

Venus near Pleiades & Hyades star clusters April 21st/22nd  (20 meteors per hour)

Venus-Mars-Moon Triangle May 23rd

Beehive Star Cluster near Mars & Venus June 1st/2nd

Venus-Mars-Moon Triangle June 6th

Moon Venus Mars Visible low in the west on the Solstice of June 21st

Delta Aquarids July 12th - Aug 23rd; peak 28th/29th July

Perseids Meteor Shower begins July 27th and peaks on 12th Aug

Blue Moon Aug 31st

Oct 14th Partial Solar Eclipse, visible to Southern USA; Gulf of Mexico

Leonids Nov 3rd - Dec 2nd; peak Nov 18th

Geminids Meteor Shower Dec 4th - 17th, peak on the 12th (120-160 meteors per hour)

[whirligig-girl]

Ayo has NASA ever shown any pics of Mars moons in it's sky? I NEED TO KNOW

a couple asks ago i showed an example of this. here’s a few more:

annular solar eclipse/transit of Phobos across the Sun from Curiosity.

transit of Deimos across the Sun from Curiosity.

Occultation of Deimos by Phobos as seen by Curiosity.

The telephoto cameras used for navigation on Mars are also capable of being used as weak telescopes. (I do not know how they safely get photos of the Sun, though. Even at Mars distance that would still fry the sensors--so i assume they must have put a solar filter on the instrument specifically for this use case.)

While looking for images I came across this really cool one from Spirit:

The bright moon-like glow is Phobos. The dimmer dot is Deimos. Towards the bottom of the image is the Hyades cluster, and the bright star Aldeberan. In the lower left is the Pleiades cluster. This is an approximately naked eye-like view (well, maybe 2x or 3x magnification), except that with the naked eye Phobos would not look overexposed.This is really striking to me because this actually feels like a view of the night sky on Earth, yet with alien moons. Really cool.

Here’s a labelled, overexposed version:

I don’t think there’s been any color pictures of this done because Mars rovers are not astronomical observatories and because there’s not much color detail actually visible in the moons. And I assume aside from the solar eclipse pictures these images were all taken at night, with pitch-black skies and nearly black horizons.

This evening or afternoon image depicting Phobos as seen by Curiosity is a composite image--Phobos is probably much brighter here than it would really look during the day on Mars.

Deimos is visible in this poorly white-balanced shot of Mars from Perseverence. The sky is green here but Mars’ sky is really more of a yellow or brown color.

Here is almost the reverse--seen from an orbiting satellite, here is Phobos against the limb (edge of the visible disk; horizon) of Mars. I believe terrain looks weirdly flattened and a little distorted here due to lensing from Mars’ atmosphere--you can see how the effect gets worse closer to the limb. A similar effect, but more significant, can happen when looking at the limb of the Earth from space. Space probes use multiple color filters to take color photos, but when it comes to fast moving targets it’s not possible to switch colors in time, which is why this image is in grayscale. Notice also how dark Phobos is--it’s almost black. It only appears bright against the even blacker space. This is also true of the Moon, incidentally, but the effect is even more pronounced with Phobos.

[galahadiant]

The Rainy Hyades and Desert Hills

My 2023 @inklings-challenge entry for Team Chesterton!

Frankly I kind of hate this piece; it was planned to be part 1 of 3 but it is not working out at all. I'm glad I participated this year, though, even if intrusive fantasy is far from my preferred genre. Father Rivas is a recurring character of mine; people who've read any of my other horror writing set in modern-ish times might recognize the name.

---

The church is on the edge of town, with only a small parking lot and an old wire fence separating it from the sagebrush flats and the grit-red hills beyond. March came in warm this year, and rainier than usual, the storms carving divots of silver water into the gritty earth. Little pockets of scarlet and orange flowers grow in the shadows of the desert hills, half-hidden by the gray spines of sage. 

Stations of the Cross are over, and the following fish fry is winding down in the dim evening light. Overhead, the steel-blue sky plays reluctant host to a spangling of early stars.

Father Rivas leans back against the clapboard side of the little church, keeping a sharp eye on the little groups of children playing in the lot. The adults are clustered around the grill and picnic table, the murmur of voices crescendoing now and then in laughter. A few beers were briefly brought out and shooed away– it is still Lent, after all. Almost Laetare Sunday. (Laetare, Jerusalem.) 

Rivas is still a young man, but his back gives him trouble. The priest’s lanky frame can usually be found leaning on something, propped up at an angle like an abandoned scarecrow in black. He doesn’t miss much, despite preferring the company of the desert to that of his congregation. It’s been almost six years since he came out here; not far from his hometown, but smaller. A municipality and not a proper town, constantly threatened by the red-gold desert grit and the encroaching tumbleweeds. He likes it out here, even if he has to chase snakes and scorpions out of the sanctuary from time to time. The people are nice, but they don’t mind too much if you spend a lot of time staring out across the sagebrush flats, or if it takes a few tries for you to answer when you’re spoken to. 

“Eden,” he calls warningly, as one particularly tall girl breaks away from the others and heads for the fence, “Be careful out there. Darkness sets in fast out here.” 

Eden turns to look back at him, her amber eyes catching flame off of the single yellow porch light in front of the church. She leads most of the children here, and often leads them into trouble– though in fairness to her, they’re usually long out of the trouble by the time any grown-ups catch on. She’s clever, and unfortunately knows it. 

“Rest assured, I won’t go far,” she says lightly. “But the starlight’s bright enough for me. I have good night vision.” She hops over the fence, and Rivas starts splitting his attention between her and the other children. A few of the younger kids run up to the edge of the fence, grabbing onto the old wooden fenceposts, and he sighs and disengages himself from his comfortable wall to go pick up Jasper, age four, and return him to the circle of porch-light. 

From what he understands, there’s been a schism of sorts in the children over the last few months. Perhaps it started earlier, with the summer baseball team (the Woodpeckers.) Some of the boys from the baseball team have started their own little operation, with a base built somewhere out in the desert. Seems that Eden takes this as an insult; she’s been getting into fights with their unofficial leader, Asher. Both of them were dragged to Confession a few weeks ago after an incident with a baseball bat.

What is she doing going out into the desert at night? 

There’s a bright flash of light overhead, and a shooting star– a low-flying airplane– a white bird burning– arcs across the sky, stunningly blue-white. Rivas barely has time to track it across the firmament before it strikes the horizon, afterimages blurring his vision in its wake.

“What was that? Did you see that?” calls Eden, running back towards the fence. He blinks a few times, the bruise-bright echo of light fading off of his eyelids. He takes a deep breath, the sharp smell of sage and dry earth. 

Eden, her hands full of cicada shells and bone. The light of the porch reflects off of her startled face. “Was that a plane, Father? Should we go look?”

“I don’t think it was a plane,” he says, recovering himself a little. His back aches. “It looked like a meteorite to me.” 

“If it was a plane that crashed, you might have to give people Last Rites,” she pursues. 

“We would have felt the impact if it were a plane, or heard it.”

Eden frowns and looks back across the sagebrush flats, tucking her handfuls of cicada-shells into the pockets of her skirt. Something is building behind her face, clever-eyed, thin grim mouth. But then again, it always looks like there’s something building there. 

The night grows deep, and parents collect their children and start home. The cicadas scream sporadically in the sagebrush flats, underneath their blanket of stars. “Hey, Father,” says a voice at his shoulder. Asher, with a pile of dirty paper plates in his hands. “We thought we’d stay and help clean up.” 

Asher has a round freckled face and wears an outsize leather jacket whenever he can, even over his church clothes. He’s got one of the other boys with him; Cody. Black hair, dark eyes, big smile. 

“Thank you, boys.”

“What’d you think about that falling star? Do you think there’s any of it left?” Asher’s bottle-green eyes are bright. He doesn’t look down at his hands at all as he works. “I bet Eden’s gonna want to give it to the Professor, but we think it should go in our museum.” 

Rivas ties off the trash bag and heaves it into the dumpster. “Your museum?”

“Well, more of a collection. All kinds of cool stuff from nature and the desert, like skeletons and geodes. But it’ll be cooler than the Professor’s stuff, because he never lets anyone touch his things and they’re all hidden away in boxes. Like a museum for real people.”

“...All museums are for real people, Asher. Dr. Kaestner has a personal collection that he sometimes lets you kids look at.” He sighs and rubs his shoulder as a new twinge of pain goes down his shoulder and spine. “It’s good to have a collection of interesting things; I had something like that when I was a boy. It was mostly eggshells.” 

Asher looks around. “Well, it looks pretty clean here,” he says, putting his hands on his hips. “We’re gonna head out. See ya, Father.”

“It’s long past dark,” says Rivas dubiously, looking up at the starry sky. The silver haze of the Milky Way can be seen dimly at the top of the sky, softening the hard, bright edges of the stars. When he looks down again, Asher and Cody have already scrambled over the fence, pushing through the gray-green sagebrush and scaring cicadas into the air. Cody sweeps a flashlight through the air, carving a blinding yellow path in the dark. 

Unlike Eden, most of the Woodpeckers don’t have parents who will miss them out past dark. He paces at the edge of the fence, chewing on the inside of his cheek. When he looks out after the boys, cresting a hill and disappearing into the sharp shadows of the sage, he sees something shining on the horizon.

There is a great light and a soft wind out of the desert, and before he knows it he’s managed to scale the old fence, cattle wire snagging on the edge of his cassock, and headed off after them.

The light is almost blue, very pale, and would be too faint to see if it were not long past dark, but here, in the desert, in grit and darkness, in the balsamroot and sage and tufted desert grasses, he can see it. Almost like a second dawn. The light reflects gently on the narrow spearhead leaves of sage. The wind smells fresh-made tonight, sharp with the smell of distant juniper trees and quite cold for this time in the spring. 

“Boys,” he calls warily, “Slow down. We don’t know exactly what it is.”

The trepidation in his voice makes Cody stop, catching at the sleeve of Asher’s oversized jacket. “We’d better wait,” he says, slowing down. 

Asher sighs, climbing up onto a lichen-covered boulder to survey the landscape. His head is framed by a bright crown of stars, the face itself in a dim blue shadow. “I want to beat Eden there,” he says, scuffing a foot on the rock. “She’ll take all the magic out of it.” His sneakers are taped up with duct tape to hold the soles on; Rivas remembers that he needs to scrape together the money to get new shoes for the kids. Asher, Cody, Cody’s little sister Nina…

“Meteorites don’t glow like that,” says Rivas, squinting at the light. He thinks, now that they’re closer, that it’s coming from a cleft between two hills, some half a mile off. A small worry squirms in his gut. “It could be radioactive, or something.”

“You can feel it, though, can’t you?” asks Asher, sitting down on the boulder and sniffing the air like a dog. “The wind smells like it’s from another world, or something out of a myth. Surely it’d smell different if it were a bomb or something.” 

“It’s not radioactive,” calls Eden. “Sillies.”

Rivas turns to see her picking her way across the sagebrush flats, holding up a plastic box that ticks sporadically. “Is that a Geiger counter?” he demands.

“I borrowed it from the Professor,” she says, with a sniff. “Father, what are you doing out here? This is our business.”

“No, it’s not. You’re thirteen.” 

“I’m fourteen,” says Asher. “C’mon, Cody, let’s go.” He grabs the smaller boy and starts marching off. In places, the sagebrush is over the boys’ heads, and Asher has to use a stick to beat his way through it.

Rivas looks down at Eden. “Did you steal that?”

“...I plan to give it back,” she says, tossing one dark braid over her shoulder. She holds it up and starts walking, keeping a careful eye on the meter. “If it does start clicking more you should shout for the boys; they won’t believe me if I tell them.” 

It’s a long walk, pathless through the sagebrush flats. The ground between the bushes is mostly bare, flecked here and there with flowers and wild, tufted grasses. The ground is gritty and flecked with small flakes of mica here and there that sparkle on the ground like another set of stars. Rivas mostly keeps his eyes turned downwards, focusing on keeping his footing without stepping on any scorpions or snakes that might still be out so late or tripping over the protruding roots. His shoes crunch in the rough sand as he follows Eden down a narrow cow-trail, into the sloping valley between hills.

“Father? Father?” calls Asher, from ahead. There’s a note of panic in his voice; Rivas’ head snaps up, and he starts to run. 

“Asher? Are you boys hur–”

There is a crater at the impact site, dark spines of vitrified sand rising from the edge of the pit. The sagebrush around it has been singed and blackened, the sand and gravel piled in echoes of shockwaves,

and in the center of the crater,

there is a small girl.

She can’t be older than seven or eight, and her hair is ashen blonde and glowing. Her skin is pale, tinged with blue at the lips and on the fingers, and she has no clothes except for the grit and ash that covers her body and the long, shining curtain of her hair. 

Her eyes are mirrors, dragonfly-faceted behind a mask of ash. 

“...She must have come from the sky,” says Eden, scrambling down into the crater, and holds up the Geiger counter. The clicks become slightly more pronounced; a slow heartbeat. The girl turns to look up at her, shuffling away a little as Eden begins to chatter– switching languages every few words, English to Spanish to broken Navajo.

“Get away from her,” Asher snaps. “Look, she doesn’t understand what you’re saying.”

“She must understand something,” says Eden. “Father, you know Latin, right?”

“Why would she know Latin?” demands Asher. He shucks off his jacket and tries to give it to the girl, who switches her mirrored gaze over to him as the jacket falls limply onto her lap. He sighs and picks it up again, trying to wrap it more closely around her shoulders.

“She might be an angel…”

Rivas’ thoughts spin frantically, trying to figure out what to do. She looks like a little girl, surely, and not an angel. He feels like an angel should be older. What if someone comes looking for her? The second, more worrying question– if something comes looking for her? 

“Hello,” he says, and swallows hard. He smiles weakly.

“Are you a Night Warden?” she asks. Her voice is high and slightly accented, the formal speech of a young child who hasn’t quite learned how tone works. “Can you help me find my mama?”  

It’s a slight shock to hear her speak, but the relief more than makes up for it. She can understand him. “I’m a priest,” he says, squatting at the edge of the crater. The wind is cold, but he can feel heat radiating from the sand. Good thing it took them a little while to get out here, or Asher and Eden would have been badly burned. “Where did you last see her?”

“...In the garden.”

He probably should have expected that line of questioning to be less than useful.

“We could take her back to our base,” says Eden. “In the auto junkyard. We have sleeping bags there for when we go stargazing, and none of the adults would find out about her; this doesn’t seem like something the adults should know about. They might call…the government.” Her bright amber eyes flick up towards Rivas, weighing him thoughtfully.

“I don’t think Father Rivas counts,” Cody stage-whispers. “Right?”

Asher gently takes each of the girl’s arms and pushes them into the sleeves of the coat, which comes down past her knees. “She’s about the same size as my sisters,” he observes, fastening a button to hold the coat in place. The girl reaches out and touches his face with a small, silver hand. “Eden, you won’t tell the Professor, will you? Even if we do bring her to your base?” 

She shakes her head grimly. “We’re going to have to carry her back,” she says. “The cheatgrass and sage are going to cut up her legs otherwise. How do shifts sound?”

Rivas’ forehead furrows. “I should carry her,” he says, and is met with three flat stares. 

“Your back, Father,” says Eden.

“She’s not very big, we can do it,” Asher says with a wave of his hand. He looks almost unfamiliar without his jacket on, in a slightly oversized blue t-shirt and nervous goosebumps covering his bare arms. 

“Fine, but I’ll carry her first,” Rivas concludes. “And we’re taking her to the church, not the junkyard. Cody, Eden, do either of you have any little girls’ clothes at home?” Eden nods.

He approaches the girl carefully, becoming aware that the sand in the crater is almost painfully hot. It’s a good thing it took them a while to get out here, otherwise he’d certainly be burning his hands right now. The wind is still cold. “Let’s get you somewhere inside, okay?” he says to the girl, putting on a friendly smile. “What’s your name? Do you want something to eat?” 

She touches her lips hesitantly and nods. “Heliaca.”

It’s a long walk back. The girl Heliaca gazes up at the moonless sky the whole way, her dragonfly eyes tracing the milky way. She seems unbothered by the sharp, thin twigs of the big sagebrush scraping against her bare legs.

They make a line against the sky as they trek along the ridged earth, gravel and sand shifting beneath them. Rivas, and then Eden, tall and lanky, and Asher, smacking his arms to keep warm, and Cody trailing a little behind to pick up pebbles. The girl, shining, outlines their silhouettes in liquid silver. 

Eden breaks away at the edge of town. “I’ll go get her some of my old things; I can get in and out without my dad noticing,” she says, scrambling up and over the fence and taking off down the road. “He shouldn’t be back from his shift yet, anyway.”

Asher jogs after her, his duct-tape sneakers snapping against the asphalt.

“...I guess they’ll be back soon,” says Rivas to Cody.

 The younger boy nods, his dark hair flopping down over his eyes. “Can I have a snack, too?”

“I’ll see what we have.”

They have chocolate-chip granola bars and juice boxes in the church basement, as it turns out. Also, a couple of very crushed fruit rollups, a clementine, and a rather stale loaf of whole wheat bread, which Rivas decides to throw away. These must be leftover snacks from the last time 4-H was in here. 

He sits Heliaca on the floor and puts an unwrapped granola bar into her hand. “Cody, can you help her with the juice box? I’m going to go make some tea, or hot cocoa or something.” He feels the urgent need to make something with his hands, to shoo away the worries that are building in his head. 

What’s going to come after her? Ordinarily he’d laugh at Eden’s whisper about the government finding out; she picked that up from her parents, a parroted turn of phrase. She might not actually be wrong this time, though. There’s bound to be some investigation, even a small one, and their footprints are all over that impact site.

He rubs his aching shoulder absentmindedly and leans against the small kitchen table in the rectory as the teakettle boils. 

And what about that mother? If she does come after the girl, will she be like a human? 

What if she doesn’t come at all?

The whistle of the teakettle makes him jump. He pours the water into five mugs of varying sizes, digs out honey and packets of creamer and tea. When he gets back to the basement, Asher is back with a pile of clothes.

“Eden’s dad got home early, so she had to go to bed,” he explains, sifting through the rumpled pile. Underwear, mismatched socks, a couple of dresses and a rather faded sweater that Rivas remembers Eden wearing constantly when she was ten or eleven. “I brought all the stuff, though. I was worried she might snitch, but it seems like she really wants to keep this quiet. Helps that the Professor is probably asleep.” Heliaca, sucking quietly on a juice box, examines the clothing. 

“Don’t you know how clothes work?” asks Cody. He starts pouring honey into his mug of hot water until Rivas reaches over and wrestles the squeeze bottle away from him. 

“I know,” she says, putting down the juice box and picking up a sock. “I’ve seen Earth people wear all these things. I’m just not normally so small.” She pulls the sock on, upside-down, and then puts a second one on correctly. “You have so few hands,” she adds casually, which is a little worrying in implication.

“Hey, Father, can I have the honey?” asks Asher, leaning over to try to take the bottle out of Rivas’ hand. He, at least, has actual tea steeping in his cup and not just boiling water. 

“Yes, fine.” Rivas is picking up one of the dresses to hand to Heliaca– she can’t keep wearing Asher’s coat forever, after all– when a sharp knock sounds on the door upstairs.

Not likely to be continued. But maybe; if I do continue it I'll put links to the other parts down here.