Demesne Patron EX SS 27 – Moon Gazing (Patreon)

There was the slightest hint of a breeze as Cassan carefully set up his brass telescope on the foot of the stairs leading out to the stone dock that extended out into the river. Here, there was just enough light to see what he was doing but no light to reflect off the lens. The instrument was his most precious possession, an inheritance from an aunt when she had passed, given to him who she knew would care for it. Truthfully, he'd had many relatives glare at him jealously when it had been given to him, and there had been an uproar when they learned he would be taking it with him to the new continent. It was the sort of thing that became passed down in the families of those who had long been with the Mysteries of Alknowledge, who had become entranced by the knowledge the Mysteries kept in its libraries.

Even when he had been wanting for beads to keep body and shadow together in Covehold, he had never considered selling away his telescope. It was too precious, too beautiful, and there were few in the demesne who would have been able to appreciate its true worth. Most places that he'd have been able to sell it to would have taken it apart for its glass and brass, the tripod melted down for its lightweight magan.

He'd rather gut himself.

It wasn't often that he got to indulge himself like this. There was always work to be done, and after a long day, one simply wanted to have dinner, take a bath, and rest. Most nights, Cassan had found himself feeling too tired to set up his telescope with the care that it needed until recently, when Lady Binder Shanalorre had begun assisting in collating the inventory of supplies they had in the demesne. Still, even when he didn't find himself so tired, some nights it just wasn't meant to be. Either it had been too cloudy, too hot, or the bugs were out and about, buzzing through the darkness and getting everywhere.

Tonight, however, there was none of that. The sky was clear, and a slight breeze was blowing over the demesne as the binding that Binder Lori had formed to send a breeze over the town persisted just a little bit longer. It wasn't so intense as to risk blowing down his telescope, and so Cassan was able to enjoy the simple pleasure of a clear night sky.

Carefully, he checked everything one last time, making sure the screws that locked the legs of the tripod in place were secured, and that the lenses were clean. While he wasn't going to be taking notes, he made sure that the markings on the telescope's swivel was properly aligned with his compass. It was both comforting ritual and proper usage.

Finally, he carefully aimed his telescope at the blue moon, peeking through the tube of the view finder on the side of the telescope to center the moon in his sights. It shone brightly, only just beginning to wane from being full. There were few clouds on it’s surface tonight or at least not so much that they stood out against the moon’s blue waters.

Carefully, making sure not to touch the telescope lest it be misaligned, Cassan looked through the telescope's eyepiece.

The blue moon seemed to leap at him, going from something that he could hide behind two fingers on the end of his outstretched arm into something much closer. White clouds became visible, floating above the deep waters of the moon's surface. Cassan knew that if he stood still and watched them long, he would see the patterns of the wind on the blue moon’s surface…

A nearby sound made him look up sharply, thinking of bugs and small crawling beasts, the kind that had sometimes found their way into the shelters before everyone had learned how to deal with them. Reflexively, he checked the lens of the telescope, even though his view had been unobstructed. He turned to find Lady Binder Shanalorre standing on the stairs behind him.

"I apologize if I disturbed you," the once Dungeon Binder of River's Fork said. After all the time they had been working together on the demesne's inventory, her calm, even, inflectionless voice was no longer so disturbing. From where she stood, her face was in shadow as the light from the demesne's lights outlined her form. "However, it is unsafe to be alone so near the river at night. Should you fall, no one would know until morning if your cries go unheard."

Cassan winced slightly. It wasn't that she as rebuking him. The Lady Binder was simply repeating the cautionary measure that Lord Rian had instituted after some people had tried swimming in the river at the end of the day to cool off in lieu of waiting for room at the baths. He still felt rebuked anyway. "I'm sorry, Lady Binder. It's just this was the best place for me to set up."

Lady Binder Shanalorre glanced at his telescope. "If you say so. I do not have the expertise to say otherwise. May I ask what you are looking at?"

The astrologer hesitated only for a moment. "The blue moon, Lady Binder," he said with cautious enthusiasm. "Would you like to see?"

What followed was a bit of awkwardness. The tripod of the telescope had been adjusted for his height, but having made the offer, it behooved him to see it through. And so, after carefully shortening the legs of the tripod and reacquiring the blue moon on the viewfinder, Lady Binder Shanalorre carefully looked through the eyepiece. “It really is made of water,” she said after a moment. She actually sounded mildly interested.

“Yes,” Cassan said. “The blue moon is one great ocean, save for the sheets of ice at its poles.“

The Lady Binder tilted her head. “Poles?” she peered into the eyepiece again. “I don’t see anything resembling poles on the blue moon, Master Cassan.”

“Ah, it’s a technical term, Lady Binder. It means the opposite points on the moon corresponding to its axis of rotation. That is, where the moon spins around.”

“I see. Then wide areas of white I see on opposite ends of the moon would be the ice you mentioned? Curious. How was it determined the moon spins? If it is all one great ocean, as you said, surely that makes it difficult to discern movement, as with the pale and red moons, which have discernible moving features.”

The expression the Lady Binder gave him looked mildly curious and far, far too smooth. It wasn’t a face that belonged to a child that asked such an insightful question. Such children asked their questions with excitement, filled with wonder and curiosity, rather than the banality of someone merely making polite conversation. It was one of the things that made the Lady Binder so disquieting. It was a terrible thing to think of a child who’d been through so much, who had worked so hard to are for the people whose Dungeon Binder she’d been, who even now had taken responsibility of the children whose parents had sent them here to be safe… but he couldn’t help thinking it.

Still, that didn’t stop him from trying to answer the question. “Astrologers used the ice sheets at the poles for reference,” he explained. “Mentalists observers noted that the shape and orientation of the ice sheets changed over time, and were able to correlate the alterations to changes in position, showing that the blue moon rotated just as the other moons did.”

“Ah. That sounds eminently logical,” the Lady Binder said, nodding in satisfaction as she carefully stepped back from the telescope. “Is the blue moon’s water also full of dillians and islandshells, as the ocean is?”

“Unfortunately, no one has built a telescope with a magnification great enough to be able to see if there’s life in the blue moon‘s water,” Cassan said, taking a turn at the eyepiece, and watched the blue waters. Even as far away as he as, they shimmered, the effects of the uncountable thousands of waves on its surface affecting the light being reflected back at him. “Even teams using Horotracting and Whispering to achieve greatly increased magnification have only been able to see the details of the clouds, or things like the general shapes of the red moon’s mountains. Even islandshells wouldn't be visible at that level of magnification."

The Lady Binder stared up at the blue moon, looking so small in the sky, the blue light it cast relatively weak compared to the pale and red moons. There was a shadow of what might have been wonder on her face. Then she nodded, and it as gone. "Thank you for indulging my curiosity, Master Cassan. I apologize for keeping you from your activity."

"There's no need to apologize, Lady Binder. I enjoy introducing people to the wonders of the night sky." Cassan hesitated, then glanced up, checking the sky. "Would you like to see the red moon?"