Gamma Cephei

In the constellation of Cepheus, in a rather empty part of the sky near the North Pole, there is a binary star system called Gamma Cephei.

Where, three billion years or so ago two young suns were tricked by gravity into a slow dance, to constantly fall towards each other but never get any closer.

They continue, trapped in their endless waltz, to this day.

You can see them, if you try, with your naked eye, in the night sky, so far away and distorted by atmospheric twinkling, they appear as one.

They are 21 million miles apart.

In between them a giant planet orbits:

Twice the size of Jupiter, its vivid rings of ice and rock slowly spin around torrid atmospheric storms of hydrogen, helium and methane below, casting multicolored shadows over her circling moons.

The biggest of these, slightly smaller than the Earth, orbital path through the giant planet’s gravity well causes huge tectonic creaks and groans as it is stretched and squeezed this way and that by gravitational tides.

Volcanoes and sulfuric vents spring up overnight, erupting through the ground, gushing up plumes of hot gas into clouds in a wet and humid air.

By these vents small sulphur eating bacteria live, deriving sustenance from the seismic energy cooked up underground. Over millions of years some evolved into small worms and others to weird plants that adapted to their volatile environment with leafs that fill up with air like balloons and so are blown away to safer climes by preemptive gaseous bursts of near by tectonic activity.

Some of these rudimentary plants became, traveling along the strange path between death and life, large trees, interlinked into groups, grasping each other for safety.

It is quite the sight to see a whole forest up root, majestically take off and gently float away across the celestial rings set on the jets of fire circling the horizon.

On these trees a species of worm evolved: eight legs, for gripping branches and under-hung munching of the gaseous leaves and over millions of years; big cheek pouches that filled up with the light tree leaf gas and could, if they felt the need, be used to float down to any passing forests below, cheeks puffed out, an alarmed look on their faces and their wiggly bodies dangling underneath.

The dimmest of these worms dropped to fiery ends down the volcano vents but the wiliest judgers of wind and relative velocity made the precarious drops to other flying forests and spread their knowledge and physical faculties. Over the generations the worms became a canny, wild eyed, puffy cheeked bunch.

Some started rearing up on six legs and the front two limbs developed into arms with 3 fingers and a thumb on each.

They found commutation useful and developed language that wasn’t based on types of sounds but on tones which carried better from floating forest to floating forest.

There wasn’t day and night as we understand them but eight different periods depending on which combination of the three bright heavenly bodies was in the sky. Each period was represented by the C major scale. Complete light and starry night the same note - just shifted an octave.

Eight fingers and thumbs led to a base eight numbering system each digit represented by D# minor.

More complicated words and sentences were made up of note combinations and chords.

The language was complicated further by the phase of the giant planet above changing the mode used.

When a lot of them chatted together it sounded not completely dissimilar to the most exquisite music.

Last Tuesday one of these worms misjudged his drop and landed on the ground.

As he scrambled up a cragged valley to find a way back to his life in the sky the two suns were eclipsed by the planet above, setting on its giant thin crescent, thirty times the size of Earth’s moon.

Darkness fell and the distant stars started to prick the velvet sky, he looked up and wondered if there was anything out there.

A duck's story

In a small northern town nestling between green hills, in a time when bread was bread, delivered by boys on bikes, pushed up steep cobbled streets to old frowning women with saggy tights and rolling pins,

where clogged and cloth capped men’s hard day’s graft down pit, black faces ingrained with coal soot, dug deep from the heart of the earth with iron picks, to burn in endless fires, billowing smoke into the air, distorted sunsets into cascades of purples, pinks and orange,

who didn’t talk nonsense and relaxed by putting ferrets down trousers and fisty cuffs outside shutting pubs as the moon rose, shining peaceful yellow light over the occasional spurt of blood or a broken tooth’s tumbling trajectory through the air in an arch to the gutter below,

near the mill, up the alley by the church, along a red brick faced Victorian terrace, past the working man’s club and right by the brass band playing in the park was a pond.

In the pond was a duck.

Who, when his fellow ducks flew into whirl-winds of anger and love or wildly swung from greed to compassion, stayed in a perpetual state of mild bemusement.

Some said his temperamental range was limited – others that it was unique – yet more that he suffered from a peculiar aliment that rarely afflicts the emotionally volatile duck-kind and was waddling a tight wire along the fine line between tedium and tension.

Maybe they all had a point.

When the delivery boys grew weary with the hills and tossed their yeasty loads into the blue water ways the other ducks hunger lust took over and a crazed soggy bread frenzy generally ensued – the desire for food and a full stomach lightening up their eyes and minds like volcanoes,

this duck just chuckled and commented on the silliness of the situation, nibbling on any spare morsel passing by.

When the female ducks’ dull and dowdily exteriors became to the male fraternity a sweet and erotic taste of paternity,

when the male’s bright and colourful plumage mirrored their reckless and brave antics stirring up deep within the hearts of the female ducks a fiery passion so bright that even the furnaces hell were dimmed in comparison,

our hero just looked on with a befuddled frown, maybe making a dry quip.

When the rumour that mad pike Frazer had taken old Bill Duckerty’s leg clean off as he paddled past a canal boat filled with slag and rubble, pulled by a weary shire-horse, metal clod hoofs clip–clopping along the towpath, surfaced and spread like wild fire around the small duck community,

our duck didn’t spend the next few days nervously peering down into the watery depths watching for mad pike Frazer’s glimmering eye as he started his lunge - or let paranoia force mass flights of fear from the slightest noise.

Oh no - for fate wasn’t a fickle and cruel mistress to him – she was a pleasant and amiable companion.

Even at the end.

One day a ferret who had seen one too many miners’ cocks went insane and made a break from his trouseriery prison. Freedom often falls badly on the ill informed especially the spatially deprived and his blissful flee across the park ended suddenly when he saw our protagonist’s neck.

It reminded him of the horror of his snaky tormentors since a young age.

He leaped and sunk his teeth in as deep as he could.

As our duck’s life ebbed away, as he finally realised the reality of endless oblivion, the eternity of nothing that would be over in the blink of an eye he did not experience the unmitigated terror normally associated with such things.

He just raised an eyebrow put on a wry smile and thought…

“Well. This is a turn up for the books!”

What a duck!

Hmm

If you fly away, far beyond the rolling hills and shady dales, past the misty mountains and down over the forest of fostered dreams to the trees with branches reaching out like the tips of tongues;

You may find a small man.

Sat in a rocking chair.

Passing lazy days forgetting tears and congealed fears

His prose may be vague poetic summaries or frosty temporary validations but he will forget – he will forget for you – he will forget for us all.