spaghettimonster | We're Still Here

[What surprising energy! Papyrus is so startled by it that he just lets Sans drag him away, and obediently enough looks up to squint at the sunless sky.]

I... see dark? Maybe a hint of a cloud...?

[He may not have glasses in any of his icons, but the mild near-sightedness that let him miss the hints of a human behind a conveniently shaped lamp followed him to this body. Sometime during October he learned that was part of the challenge in driving, and addressed the matter... but they're not on his face this second.]

Nah, on the other side of the cloud. We can see stars up here. [Which is obvious, of course, but he can actually see real stars right now.] There's that park in town, it'd probably be better there, but once it's late enough most of the lights are out here anyway. [Which is why Sans is out here at midnight.]

Oh... oh! Seeing real stars! [He's only just getting with the program - Sans is all excited because outer space. He squints futilely at the dark for another second, then nods.]

Okay, I need to go grab... a few things. Like real shoes. Hold on a minute!

[He's just in slippers, here. And, mostly, he needs those glasses if this is to be an outing he'll enjoy.]

[Sans is also in slippers, but of course that doesn't bother him.] Sure, I'm not going anywhere. [Sans is just going to keep staring at the sky, actually. There's a huge difference between seeing drawings and photos and seeing the real thing.]

[Sans's feet must already be numb, because Papyrus's get cold in slippers at this temperature. It's a couple quiet minutes - in part to avoid waking anyone else up - as Papyrus puts on socks, sturdier shoes, glasses, and a warmer jacket before returning.]

Okay! What have you got to show me? [Go ahead, brother, chat Papyrus's ear off about sciencey things.]

Okay, so I found Ursa Minor--that's this bear constellation--so that means Polaris's gotta be that star right there. [Sans points, though admittedly it is kind of hard to point to one specific star in the sky.] It's the North Star, 'cause it's always north. Uh, if you're in the northern hemisphere, anyway.

[It's not really important to their situation--trapped here in human bodies and shoved into fake lives. It's silly. But even so, there's that little spark to Sans's tone he doesn't get very often anymore.]

[Looking up with the glasses, instead of some faint blobs he sees a lot of outright dots of light. They're maybe not as colorful as the glowing crystals, nor as large... but more numerous, and more importantly, they're inspiring rare spark of enthusiasm and energy in Sans. One to be encouraged, when it isn't about annoying Papyrus! But any annoyance tonight, between texts and reminders of the need to sleep, was pretty clearly incidental, so he can give it a pass and focus on staring up.]

The small north bear star... It doesn't bear much resemblance to the name. [Nyeh heh heh. Remind him how constellations work?]

[Heh.] Yeah, it's also this other constellation, the little dipper? Like a ladle. That one works better. See, those four are the ladle and then those three are the handle, with Polaris at the top. [Sans is attempting to point again.] The bear's kinda... Abstract. Bearly there.

Heheh. [It's too late at night for some proper NYEH HEH HEH-ing, but quieter chuckles sneak out anyway. Thankfully the stars Sans is trying to point at are fairly bright, easier to see.]

Yeah, I see a ladle. If I imagine lines, between the brighter stars...

[It doesn't look like any kind of bear he's ever seen, but ladle, sure. Just like the ones for serving soup, or doling out sauce. He hums, thinking back to the other point. Why did they call it a bear...?]

Oh. Wait. Maybe the naming is the other way around. Polaris... bear... polar bear? [There's some polar bear monsters in the underground, surely. And, failing that, plenty of commercials of soda-loving ursines among the trash that trickled underground. Maybe they dole out soda with ladles, in some of the commercials that monsters never saw.]

If it ain't a polar bear already, it is now. [They can decide things like that, probably.] The handle's supposed to be the tail, and then the spoon bit's the body, if you're lookin' for the bear. Let's see... Ursa Major's over there, and you can tell Orion by the belt... [Okay Sans is getting a little caught up in just being able to see constellations for real, sorry.]

[Unless the astronomy police roll into town and make them stop crafting their own lore, they can definitely decide things like that. Papyrus might start making up his own constellations just for fun. But for now...]

What, two bears? [He almost regrets the question, interrupting Sans on a roll as it is. But he follows Sans's finger and sees the second ladle quickly enough.] Oh! There it is.

Yeah, they're buddies. [This is the superior constellation lore.] If you can find the bears, you can find Polaris, and then you can tell which way north is. It's like a navigation thing. [Sans is only incidentally interested in that part.] And Polaris looks like one star from here, but it's a triple star system, so there's three of 'em all orbiting around each other. They're like 300 or 400 light years away.

[SPACE FACTS.]

Three hundred light years... [He remembers this term, from previous Sans enthusing about space times. Mainly he remembers because the scales involved were mind-blowing if he let himself think about it all for long.] The sun... is a star. But its light reaches the planet in... less than an hour?

Eight minutes, twenty seconds. Light's real fast, but with space, everything's just--big. [The kind of big Sans likes. Sans has read about space making people feel small, but for Sans, it's reassuring. There's an infinity of other things going on outside his own head.]

[Less than a tenth of an hour, so multiply all the distances he was thinking about by six... And he's not exactly how sure how far away the sun is, but whatever answer his brother offers will probably be way larger than anything Papyrus has had reason to really imagine. And that's not getting into:

...That's one of the brighter stars. Or. Triplet stars. Are the dimmer stars... further away...?

[Just how far away does space get, Sans. It's a little unsettling, standing on the outside of the world like this, without gravity magic... What if there was an earthquake, and he was knocked into orbit? Would he drift for thousands of years...?]

It's a combination. Farther away, or smaller, or both. The farthest star I've heard of is this blue supergiant fourteen billion light years away. You can't see that one with your eyes, though. Besides the sun, the closest one's like 4 light years away. [Everything is very big in space.]

"Bill"...? Sans. You accidentally said billion,, with a b. [Didn't he hear that the Earth was something like a few billion years old? How could there be "super giant" stars more than ten billion light years away? How... how big is space. He doesn't even look at Sans for the answer, just stares up at the seemingly dark spaces between the stars he can see. How many stars are too far, too tiny to see?]

Are there stars, we can't even see... because the light hasn't reached us yet...?

I said billion 'cause I meant billion. And that's just the farthest one humans have seen. There's all sorts of stars y'can't see 'cause the light isn't here yet. And 'cause the light we see's so old, some of those stars up there are already gone. [Like the soul of a boss monster, hanging around for just that little bit longer even with the body gone.]

Some of them...? Oh, wow. [That part gets a little more sincere wonder, even if the existential dread of it all is still underlying. The scale of things isn't exactly heartening for Papyrus, not the way it is for Sans. But that piece draws his attention somehow.

Like photos and books that people still see and read after the creators - or subjects - have fallen. History underground isn't the most popular subject, since it invariably dwells upon their captivity and loss... but it's the most popular with the elderly, those who are realizing that all they know is about to be forgotten, if people don't stop and listen. He's stopped and listened to Elder Puzzler more than a few times, and taken to the more classical schools of puzzle-building in part because of a solidarity of that fear.]

Is there any way to tell which ones are... already gone?

Nah, they're too far away. Even if the sun disappeared all of the sudden, we wouldn't know for eight minutes. Not that it's goin' anywhere any time soon. [In general. Sans can't say when a reset will happen and take it away from them specifically, but it's not as if they'll even remember having seen the sun, so it's fine.]

Uhhhhhhh. [Look at that, the existential dread is returning, and now it's bringing a friend. Papyrus's eyes drift down to the tree line, which seems reassuringly unlikely to wander away or burn out while he watches.] How long. Is the sun. Supposed to live.

[Is live even the right word for the sun? If it was secretly a very large and distant monster, it's not like humans could have done anything to stick it in a mountain.]

Like seven or eight billion years. Plenty of time left. [Especially if it keeps looping, but Sans isn't going to think about that right now.]

I see... That's billion with a b again. Okay! [As long as it's a length of time that's challenging to even conceive of, Papyrus can be pretty sure that everybody he's ever known, besides maybe Toriel, will be fine.]

It's space, the numbers are big too. [But the last thing anyone has to worry about right now is the sun dying.] 'S reliable like that.

[Time and distance scales that stretch so far beyond comprehension that the idea of one human with a lot of Determination even seems small by comparison. When Sans reaches for the barest grasp of the scale involved, the idea that the human could impact things on that scale is silly. He can't do anything about them, but they can't possibly do anything on the scale of the universe.]

Then why... is it such a small word? [There's other things on his mind, but this is the easiest to talk about while avoiding the more serious things.] 'Space.' Only five letters... It should be big to match. And capitalized all the time.

[You know, as if Papyrus was the one enthusing about space. As is, he tucks gloved hands into his pockets and continues looking up, feeling smaller than he's ever felt - even as a baby bones. Would it feel easier, if he was still a skeleton, aware of where his friends were at, on a surface with the technology he expected? Or would the enormity of space be just as disorienting?]

We're Still Here - IC Inbox

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being human will not stop me from using this icon when I can

Extremely fair use of it tbh

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sad headcanons ahoy

good sad headcanon

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I thought I remembered December being good for meteor showers

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