[OPEN] Stargazer

[misschocolover.livejournal.com]

Megan didn't often spend a great deal of time in the sensoriums. Escapism was rarely appealing to her - at least not as much as problem solving was - but every once in a while homesickness would drive her to some illusory indulgence.

Today she lay on her back on the ground, splayed out on top of a large soft blanket like a ginger starfish, red hair a loose cloud around her head. The ground she had made her bed on was barren for the most part, an empty plain of rich red earth that stretched for miles around her into the darkness. Above her hung the bright tapestry of stars that provided her only light, the stars she remembered seeing laying in the front yard of her childhood home, peering up into Mars' midnight sky.

Stargazing had always been calming to her. It stood to reason that even here on Stacy the ritual would still work, just as it had still worked on Earth back at home.

Comments

[azulescarabajo.livejournal.com]

Jaime's voice interrupted the near total silence of the red planet's silence, feet crunching across the surface as he stepped up to his friend.

". . .I've never seen them from here, before." He peered up at the stars, not bothering to activate the armor in the artificial environment of the Sensoriums. He just had to think that he could breathe.

"It's very beautiful."

[misschocolover.livejournal.com]

Megan tilted her head back to smile at him but didn't get up, just patted the blanket beside her for him to help himself to a seat.

"It is, isn't it?" she agreed. "I wish I'd looked at them more when I had the chance as a kid."

"Did you need this sensorium for something yourself?"

[azulescarabajo.livejournal.com]

"Oh, no. I was just looking in, didn't have anything in mind, really." He took the offered seat next to Megan, stretched out his legs across the red sand. He peered upwards, trying to discern anything familiar from the alien sky.

". . .I don't recognize any of the constellations. Darn."

[misschocolover.livejournal.com]

Megan beamed, glad both that she wouldn't have to give up her stargazing and that Jaime chose to join her in it. She sat up to lean back on her hands.

"Well, you can't see all of the same ones anyway, but then ones that are the same are all at different angles so they don't look right."

She points up to one particular line of stars. "That one is Orion's Belt on Earth, but here it forms a constellation with those other two stars next to it that's called N'ak Tel."

[azulescarabajo.livejournal.com]

"Oh, cool!" He squinted as he followed her finger, nodding.

"I never really had time to think about how different the stars looked when I was off Earth before. . .and now when I am thinking about it, there isn't Earth." Jaime sighed and closed his eyes a moment.

"But, uh, show me another one."

[misschocolover.livejournal.com]

Megan shifted closer to wrap her hand over Jaime's on the blanket, squeezing his fingers reassuringly when he sighed.

She then pointed up to another obligingly, glad to distract from the frustration of what couldn't be fixed...

"Well, uhm, that one there you can't see from Earth at all, the big arc with that reddish star underneath. It's called H'ronmeer's Eye. It's supposed to watch over travelers in the dark from what I remember."

[zouichi.livejournal.com]

Zouichi recognized this environment from the records. It was Mars, or perhaps Mars as it had existed before the first Terrans had broken ground on the construction of their new colony. And before that colony had been destroyed, of course.

The gravity was weaker here, so his strides became long and loping as he explored the iconic reddish rock. It wasn't long before he spotted Megan looking up at the stars. "Revisiting old haunts?" he asked. It was a joke.

[misschocolover.livejournal.com]

"Old homes, actually." Megan replied, sitting up from her blanket and turning toward him with a friendly smile.

"But I'm just sitting here, really. Did you need the sensorium for something?"

[zouichi.livejournal.com]

That got him a little curious. "Did you live on Mars? Where I come from, no one's lived there for... well, a couple hundred years."

He shook his head. "Not particularly, no. I thought I might try recreating a few scenes from old Earth, that's all. It never occurred to me to try visiting the other planets in the solar system."

[misschocolover.livejournal.com]

"I was born on Mars. I lived there with my parents until a plague nearly killed everyone." Megan told him, looking up at the stars again. "A few families including mine fled the planet, meaning to head to another star system, but we ended up on Earth instead and that's where I was before I woke up here."

She smiled. "Other planets are pretty fun to visit, really. Sometimes you can just make up a word and ask for that planet and there really will be a planet called that in the archives!"

[zouichi.livejournal.com]

Zouichi frowned. "The same sort of thing happened in my universe. Not the fleeing to another planet part, but the plague. It was a long time ago, but the virus eventually spread to Earth as well." Come to think of it, he wondered if it were the same kind of disease?

...Nah, probably not.

"Perhaps before we set down on a planet, we should try to examine it here. It might cut down on the number of surprises we run into during missions and leaves." Way to miss the point, Zouichi. "So you come here to... experience other planets often?"

[changelingdude.livejournal.com]

And then came a green floating unidentified object drifting across the stars.

"Spaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaace." Beastboy giggled amusing himself as he often did by crashing in on other people's Sensorium sessions.

[misschocolover.livejournal.com]

Megan jumped, then burst into giggles.

"Oh no! A space monster!" she called up to him. "But that's okay, I'm a space monster too! So we can be friends, right?"

[changelingdude.livejournal.com]

"You bet!" And then he turned into a little green puppy and came "running" out of the sky to roll around on the barren ground like the happy canine he had turned into.

[misschocolover.livejournal.com]

Megan lit up, delight all over her face and she came to the edge of the blanket and held out her hands for her newly dog shaped friend.

"Oh my gosh you're SO CUTE like that! I didn't know you could be a cute puppy!"

[changelingdude.livejournal.com]

Beastboy leaned in to lick at the fingertips of the pretty girl while he used the Sensorium to communicate, "You bet! Any animal you want, even some aliens. Just say the word and I am your one man petting zoo!" He loved to show off after all.

[splendid_roman]

Ian hadn't realised anyone was in here. When he came in, he saw the ground and the sky before he saw the girl. "I'm sorry," he said, when he did see her. "I didn't mean to disturb you." But he couldn't quite bring himself to leave straight away. It was peaceful and different. The stars didn't look familiar and that brought home to him that he was looking at an alien sky.

[misschocolover.livejournal.com]

Megan sat up from her blanket with a smile, un-bothered by the intrusion.

"Oh it's okay, you're not bothering me." she insisted. "Did you come to stargaze too?"

[splendid_roman]

"Not specifically," he said, smiling back. "But I do like stargazing. Where are we looking at them from?"

[misschocolover.livejournal.com]

"This is Mars as it was when I was a little girl." she explained, pointing up toward the horizon and a small bluish star. "See that little star there? That's actually Earth."

[splendid_roman]

"Really?" He went over to sit by her so he could see where she was pointing. He supposed that would explain the redness of the earth. "I've never seen Earth from space," he said, smiling as he marvelled at the sight.

[mylittlelolny.livejournal.com]

As usual, Pinkie let herself in, and made her prescence known in the most in-your-face way possible. Literally, as she stood over and looked down at the girl, totally blocking her view. "Hi! Whatcha doin'?"

[misschocolover.livejournal.com]

Megan jumped a little at the face that suddenly blocked her view, but sat up to greet the newcomer with a smile. Oh neat! Another pony!

"Oh, hello! I'm just looking at the sky. I got a little homesick so I brought my home planet up in sensorium so I could stargaze."

Megan rather liked the shade of pink that made up the pony's coat. She had no horn, which puzzled the martian girl a tad. But surely there were just all KINDS of colored ponies where her unicorn friend was from, so this pony was surely from the same place as Rarity was, even if she was horn-less!

"Do you know a white pony with a purple mane and diamonds on her flank?" Megan asked curiously, tilting her head to get a better look at the mark on the pink pony's side. "You have balloons! How pretty!"

[mylittlelolny.livejournal.com]

Pinkie stepped back and looked up at the sky herself. "I know what you mean! Whenever I start missing Ponyville, I just come in here and I feel right at home! It's so neat!"

She plopped down, making it a little easier to stare upwards.

"Oh! That's my friend, Rarity! The diamonds are her cutie mark!" She turned a little so Megan could get a better look at her flank, and beamed: "And this is mine! Haven't you ever seen one before?"

[misschocolover.livejournal.com]

Megan beamed, taking a closer look at the balloons.

"Nope! Well, I've seen Rarity's but I didn't know what it was called until now. Do they stand for something? Do all ponies where you come from have one?"