trans_9 | Fly me to the moon [Closed]

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Fly me to the moon [Closed]

Rhiow had not forgotten her promise to a certain Winchester, made a ways back before the Nightmare King. It had taken her a relatively short amount of time to find a quiet place, sink into the Whispering and gather information about the planet. Earthlike statistics, including a small moon.

It would be a simple matter to slot in the coordinates for this planet and its moon, and Rhiow had spent a small amount of time tweaking the gravitational and rotational constants so they wouldn't end up in the middle of space - or the middle of the moon.

Now, she only had to contact Sam. A quick comm ring message - [[Sam, did you still want to go to the moon? Meet me near the obs deck. Dean can come if he wishes, and your friend as well.]]

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Sam had, honestly, almost forgotten about the promise. It wasn't that he didn't want to go. It was just that, with everything that had happened and especially what he'd learned recently, it seemed a small thing.

Right up until Rhiow's message came through and he grinned. [[Yeah, Rhiow. We'll be right there.]]

He snagged Dean and Castiel by the sleeves on his way past. "Hey, guys. Rhiow's got a surprise for us." It certainly felt good to be smiling again.

Dean followed alongside his brother, and glanced back at Cas with some confusion.

"Surprise? What's going on, Sammy?"

Cas was both sober, and not hung-over, for once. Dean keeping an eye on him must be working. He followed along obediently after the brothers, looking at Sam curiously.

Seeing the three of them approach made Rhiow put her whiskers forward in a smile. She didn't know if ehhif normally kept in-pride to the extent that these three did, but they seemed to be together more often than not, and that was enough for Rhiow.

"Ssam! Dh'ean!" she said, flipping her tail from side to side. "And I don't believe we've met - I'm Rhiow. I promised Ssam a small while ago that I would take him to the moon... and here we are, a planet with a moon."

"Hi, Rhiow." Sam let go of his brother and Cas, kneeling down to offer his hand. "Rhiow, this is Castiel. He's a friend of ours from home and..." He paused, remembering the questions Rhiow had asked him for the spell before. "Umm. His name is going to get complicated."

Dean shrugged, and clapped a hand on Cas's shoulder, "Not a problem, Cas's expert on Enochian. Ain't that right. We'll be fine."

Cas frowned at Dean. "Well, I am, but I don't see how that's relevant to anything."

He returned to staring at Rhiow. He had no experience with cats whatsoever, so he didn't know what to make of Rhiow.

"The speech isn't the same as Enochian," Rhiow said - and as she spoke, she rubbed up on Sam's hand in greeting. It was nice to know that at least someone knew how to be polite.

"Hh'ass," Rhiow said, flicking her ears. "Well met on errantry. If names are going to be complicated, I suppose we should start with them -"

The Whisperer hissed something softly into her ear, and she tilted her head at Castiel. He smells human.

He was not always, the Whisperer said. There is the smell of Powers around him.

Rhiow shrugged her tail and pressed her paw to a nearby bundle of hyperstrings. Her and Sam's names floated gently into existence on the ground, and she looked up at Dean and Castiel. "We'll start with your full names. And birthdays."

Sam looked at the names, glancing over his. "I'm pretty certain not too much has changed since last time. Unless a few new scars are going to change anything."

Other than that, he was content to sit back and let Dean and Cas do the question answering.

Though how to answer Cas' birthday was going to be interesting.

Dean wondered about that too. Did angels even have birthdays? God created him at some point, sure, but how did that work.

He then cleared his throat, and said, "Dean Winchester. January 24, 1979." Might as well get the year in as well.

He then glanced over at Cas, a little worried on how this was going to work.

Cas didn't know why the cat needed their names and birthdays, but Dean was going along, so he would follow Dean's lead. "And I am Castiel," Cas said, then frowned. "But I was not born, I was created. ... On the first day," he offered, as if that made everything clear.

The symbols to start Dean's name drifted to the ground, followed by the long curling placeholder. She would slot them in as he answered the rest of her questions, which she would begin...

As soon as she stopped licking her nose. The combination of characters that began Castiel's name was longer even than Haku's. Powers. There are far too many Powers on this ship.

"A name is an essential part of you. The Speech is an incredibly specific language, and your name in the Speech describes everything about you. I can get it from the Whispering, but you have to 'target' the query first - there are a lot of universes, and people are not the same from universe to universe even if they go by the same name. I have to make sure I describe the right person, the right way."

As she spoke, she re-arranged the names - hers, Sam's, and the other two incomplete strings - along the outside of what would be the circle when she finally built it. As she moved, she asked more questions - what Dean's favorite food was, what weapon Castiel had weilded, what their favorite time of day was. She tried to tailor her questions so that Castiel would always be able to answer, but 'what is your favorite color' could stump anyone for a moment.

Sam watched the words and names falling into place. He couldn't understand it in the least, but there was a definite beauty to them. And he wasn't surprised in the least to see just how long a name Cas had in the Speech, as Rhiow called it. For such a short name in English, there was just a lot to Cas.

Dean wasn't surprised either. Things were just going to be different. He and Sam were mostly basic mortals. Cas on the other hand.... yeah.

It was really a toss up between bacon cheeseburgers and pie, and well really pie. Especially cherry pie fresh from the oven. And how much he loved the time just around sunset, when the western sky was blazing with colors. Along with the other questions she asked. He just hoped the strings forming didn't mean Michael's bitch at any point.

Some questions were easy for Cas to answer. He wielded an angel's blade. His commander had been Anna. His best friend ... he looked around for a moment, before finally saying, "... Dean."

Dean's name truncated at exactly the same length as Sam's, and Rhiow tilted her head curiously as the same marker showed up in both, in almost the same place. Both of the brothers, it seemed, had been meant to serve the Powers... and had subverted it. Rhiow put her whiskers forward until they quivered. Had trouble with these two, didn't you? she asked Hrauf, amused. The Whisperer gave her a disgruntled hiss in return and she flipped her tail.

Castiel's string wound down to a close as well, and as the ending symbol - a 'to be continued' mark used for names - floated down into place, she turned to them. "Even if you don't know the Speech, I would like for you to check your names. If they're correct, they should feel so. Don't be afraid to speak up if I've gotten something wrong - when a name is spoken in spell, it's made true, and I don't want to change anything. Ssam, you should probably check yours too."

In the meantime, she began pacing a circle out around them, characters falling from her paws as she went. It was the standard lunar transport spell that she used for Earth, so after the binding Wizard's Knot floated to close the circle, she jumped over to the conglomerate of new variables she had added for this planet, checking them against the Whispering.

Sam flipped a quick salute at Rhiow before moving to the familiar symbols he'd seen Rhiow pull out earlier. He'd glanced over them once but it never hurt to do a second time. Especially when it was as important as this.

"Looks like mine's okay," he said, straightening up.

Dean carefully watched her go through the placement, and he stepped closer to the edge of where the characters were. He studied it for a moment, didn't get a lick of it.

After a moment he remarked, "All Greek to me, but seems fine."

Edited 2010-06-18 22:37 (UTC)

Castiel had been watching the entire process with great interest. "Fascinating," he said, crouching down to get a closer look at the golden words on the ground. "It appears to be a version of pre-Babel Aramaic. Almost the language of Man before the Fall." He delicately traced his fingers across the glowing letters, frowning at the sensation. "It's ... very specific. You're intending to alter the fabric of reality, aren't you?"

"Only a little," Rhiow said. "It's more like convincing reality that its rules aren't as fixed as it thinks they are."

She said it like altering reality was no big deal - well, for her it wasn't. She sat down next to a chunk of symbols on the outer edge and tilted her head. That doesn't look right, she thought, and then huffed at herself in annoyance.

Rhiow sunk her claws into that small string of characters. "Calculate three over four." A number flickered in the dirt. "Calculate answer times pi - shorthand, three point one four one five nine." The number changed in value. "Calculate answer times fourteen cubed-" the final number shone and she put it back into the spell string, scratching her ear.

"Almost made it People-sized, not ehhif-sized. That would have been a little interesting." Rhiow trotted to the center of the circle, seeing the echo of the spell in her mind's eye. "Is everyone ready? The bounding circle is finished and I have enough atmosphere for us to stay for about half an hour, give or take. The spell will let me know when I'm running short - as of now, don't go outside the bounds. There will only be oxygen within the confines of the circle. Granted, I made the circle twenty-eight feet wide..."

Sam grinned, straightening up. "Interesting is one word for it. Glad that you realized the mistake before we went anywhere." Sam was all for not asphyxiating, after all. "And it's called magic, Cas. Only it's real magic, not the stuff we see on our world." The stuff that was given by demons to pull souls closer to Hell.

"Half an hour should be plenty, so long as nobody starts hyperventilating." Which would possibly be Dean.

"Nobody better," Dean muttered since yeah, it would likely be him, but like hell was he going to admit it. As long it was more like teleporting and less like flying. And not angel express teleporting either. He liked his system working normally, thanks.

Castiel was still watching Rihow's process with the symbols, but he nodded absently. "I am ready as well."

That made everyone. "Very good. This might be uncomfortable for a few seconds," she said - another brief warning to go with the one she had given about the atmosphere. "And mind the gravity."

She put her ears forward, examining the beginning of the spell. Then she took a breath, opened her mouth, and began to read.

"This is a interterrestrial spatial translocation, bounding component to include atmosphere-impermeable low-force shielding calibrated to the atmosphere requirements of four persons-"

As she read the spell, the sounds of the beach and the planet seemed to slowly fall away, the universe listening in closely to what Rhiow required of it. It pressed in until the air began to ring, the silence building and building until Rhiow thought her ears were going to pop, her careful, measured voice the only sound-

And then there was a crack of air replacing the vacuum they created as they vanished from the surface of the planet, arriving with a whump and a circular spray of moondust a few inches thick.

"We're here," Rhiow said, settling down and wrapping her tail around her paws.

Sam had been through this once before, though that had been for a short jaunt between one level of Grand Central Station and the one below. still, it didn't feel all that different in some ways. The tightening pressure, the air ringing. All of that was similar to what he'd been through before. And what was waiting on the other end was more than worth it.

And then Rhiow was announcing they were there and Sam...could only stare. "Oh. My God," he said softly, barely breath to the words. Because above them were all the stars that you couldn't see from planetside and in front of them? Was a ball of blue with far less green than Earth, but it still looked amazing.

That's nice Sam, because Dean hadn't, and he was more tense for it. He thought it'd be like the butt clenching Angel Express. This was a bit different from that, and he wiggled a finger in his right ear for a moment. Stupid ringing.

Still the scowl dropped away when he got sight of where they were now.

"............Holy shit," was his contribution to the awe and wonder.

The planet below wasn't earth, but it was close enough that if Cas squinted, it was as if it was earth and here he was sailing above it as if he were flying, only it wasn't his wings that had gotten him here.

Cas shoved his hands in his pockets and turned his back on the view of the planet below (above? next to?) them, staring out unblinkingly on the vast expanse of stars that formed the rest of the view from the moon.

Rhiow had seen this view many times before - she came to the moon to think sometimes, and to meditate. This moon wasn't The Queen's Eye, and the planet below wasn't her home, but she laid down, tucking her forepaws under her chest and curling her tail around her side. "Was it everything you expected, Ssam?" she asked. It was always fun to watch people who came here the first time, overwhelmed by the expanse of stars and the small blue ball floating in their midst.

"I...have no idea what I expected," he said after a moment. "I've seen the pictures from the Apollo landings, of course. But it's...it's not at all like that, either." Because this was real. "And...wow. The pictures don't usually show the stars."

Dean and Sam would often watch the stars from the Impala on quiet nights. But it had never been like this.

He had fallen silent, staring at everything in a daze. For some reason, Pink Floyd's Learning to Fly played acress his brain for a moment, followed by Dark Side of the Moon.

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Fly me to the moon [Closed]

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