Salah completed. Time to rip and tear.
Transcript
Idrisah is doing dhuhr salat, the noon-time prayer. She sits up in a kneeling position and looks over her right shoulder, quietly reciting the last surah.
Idrisah: السلام عليكم ورحمة الله
Then over her left shoulder.
Idrisah: السلام عليكم ورحمة الله
She rolls up the prayer mat and walks over to the picnic blanket Gillie sits on.
Gillie: (ASL) So where’s Mecca right now?
Idrisah: (ASL) According to the AR app…
She looks at her phone and points overhead.
Idrisah: (ASL) Up there, setting to the North. Did I miss anything?
Gillie looks over at Talita, who is leaning over a trashcan, one hand on rim and the other rubbing her antler.
Gillie: (ASL) Talita just ran off. I’m not sure w–
62 thoughts on “Runaway to the Stars: Page 196”
snaps
oh man they’re about to be horrified arent they
Boxthing
Makes me wonder about how people are dealing on the ISS. How do you properly fast for Ramadan when the “sunrise” and “sunset” happen every hour or so?
The Opossum Witch
There’s actually a guide book for muslims on the ISS! “Guidelines for Performing Islamic Rites at the International Space Station”
JoB
Waaaiiit a second … “setting to the North”??
First off, being gravitationally locked to its sun, Dirtball should make exactly one rotation (“sidereal day”) for every time it completes its orbit around said sun (“year”), so that would be a rather slo-mo form of “setting” at best.
Second, is Idrisah referring to the Galactic North here? Or do the Dirtballers have a definition of “North” entirely different from ours (as in, “North” and “South” are where the relevant rotation’s axis point) … ?
Peter Jensen
Well, to be tidally locked, it would probably have to be decently close to the star and thus have a fairly short year/day. But still, the “setting” would indeed be slow. And most likely they’re using local planetary “north”, though there’s no real practical need to have that defined in this setting. Heck, it could just be arbitrarily defined by some feature in their habitat, just so people have a common way of referring to directions.
TauCeti
Tide-locked moons have a north pole (based on their rotation direction, I think? — so it matches their orbit’s “north”.) But yeah, Mecca would be setting slowly indeed.
JoB
Yes, as I said, the convention (as of now) is that the rotational axis of the body in question goes through its North pole and its South pole. Which implies that any celestial object seen from it is bound to set in an East-West-ernish direction …
Thisfox
It’s winter here right now, and the sun is setting a surprising amount north of where it would usually set in the west, although admittedly closer to Westerly each day. We aren’t in the tropics, so the sun never sets exactly west, even in January. Perhaps “in the north” simply means that, she means “north of where it was when you asked me last week”.
Soglet
BONE TIME
raz
Idrisah praying made me feel really emotional and nostalgic. thank you. im wondering if she was raised sunni because it’s a different ending prayer than I remember. or if it could be just adapted a bit somehow, or if I’m just remembering it wrong
JoB
> it’s a different ending prayer than I remember
Maybe a side effect of Idrisah officially not speaking Arabic … ?
Sparky Lurkdragon
She isn’t *fluent*. That doesn’t mean she doesn’t speak it at all.
JoB
Well, she is speaking some on this very page, of course … you (and the source) said “fluent”, I wrote “officially” (as in, “would you list that on your CV?”) …
Jay Eaton
She is sunni, yep.
Robin
I wonder what the social norms amongst centaurs are about shedding your velvet. Like that’s kinda biohazardous material. Is it treated similarly to menstruation?
Kumquatq
I think to talita it is treated as such since its a cycle of sorts
Solidago
Clovers came to space with us, let’s go
MyUniverseinaBox
This is a gorgeous page, which is funny considering the lead up.. LMAO
Wenistarrburst
I’m high key curious as to what kinds of trees were planted in the human greenery section. What’s the average interior temperature anyway?
Vinemaple
It’s clear there ARE Earth trees in the park, from some of the bird’s eye views and such, but the backgrounds on this page and the last are making me wonder if there aren’t also murals of trees, painted on the wall… It’s hard to tell if that’s a mural or just Jay de-emphasizing the background (by the way, check out the cool way they’ve faded in the white outlining around the characters on this page).
Cassette
I was gonna go back and find an earlier page where Talita’s long distance vision is mentioned in detail, but I can’t find it… So I’m just gonna ask on the most recent page, which is this one!
What is Talita’s field of view (expressed in analogous lens FOV on 35mm film/sensor)? no matter how good your eye is at focusing really far away, a thing that’s really small in your field of view is still really small, even if its rendered very sharply.
Does Talita’s field of view change as she looks at faraway stuff (that would explain being able to function-ish in human society if her field of view is narrow at a distance)? what does her peripheral vision look like? if her field of view is similar to a humans, does she just have like… very very dense rods and cones so that even small things can be observed pretty well at long distances? I must know!
JoB
> find an earlier page where Talita’s long distance vision is mentioned in detail
I suppose that that’d be this one, but I doubt you’d get any replies to a post there. :-3
All I can say WRT your actual question is that compared to humans, Talitas eyes are huge (about the size of a(n adult typ) human’s fist) … and that “high resolution of their retinas” is explicitly mentioned on the centaur biology page as well. No mention of how they adapt/focus for varying distances, though.
MoonyBeasty
I never thought I’d be so excited to see bone(antler) peeling, yet here we are. I really hope it freaks Idrisah and/or Gillie out >:3 Or gross them out if they’re not already aware of the antler thing
hurgaburga
a nickel says talita ripping her velvet off is gonna be really graphic and gives idrisah and gillie a shock
JoB
What’s your definition of “really graphic”, then? Half her face coming off along with it? :-3
krisiverse
Have you seen pictures of deer taking off their velvet? It’s super bloody, LOOKS gruesome, but the deer is completely fine.
JoB
No, but I did link to this in a comment on the previous page … 😉
Hedge
Well, that sure is a gross but hilarious mental image and then some.
Also, your username…you didn’t used to read SSSS did you?
hurgaburga
i dont even know what that is, i just came up with something silly
JoB
Sure did (and I posted a link to Mikkel pranking a certain reporter a ways down on this page, after all). 😉
HAL9000
i imagine centuar antler peeling and bugferret eye peeling videos are very popular on future social media
Trees
Bugferret… eye… peeling?!?
JoB
Yup.
Trees
Genuinely hesitated before clicking that link but I suppose it could have been a lot worse. Kind of like contact lenses.
HAL9000
i have no idea where jay said it but the eyes remain the only exoskeletal part of a bug ferret, and thus the only part externally moulted every now and then. hence, eye peeling
Ruby
Time to give the Touati-Sharpes a scare.
Zuorai
The visuals of Idrisah praying are sooooo beautiful
creetur
Feel like a velvet peel would be satisfying, despite the blood!
Neat to see other religions in media too. Not particularly religious by any means, but I like learning about them.
Solidago
Seeing religion adapted to space just makes sense. ^_^ That faith stuff sure is generationally sticky.
Gar G
She’s about to find out
XD
Tyrone
Its gonna be gooood!
“SNAP……plunk”
JoB
“… is it supposed to scream as it goes??” >;->
Vinemaple
Extra page of pre-peel buildup, I love it… also, I’m really impressed by how you showed Idrisah being completely focused on prayer, with that background. Gorgeous!
un_pogaz
I was a little confuse that Gillie asked where Mecca was. The Earth is so far away that Idrisah only had to consult his app once he arrived on the planet, and that it should be the same direction all the time, right?
And then, I remembered that Dirtball’s rotation axis will realy fuck up the thing.
un_pogaz
Idrisah: *she/her
Damn it transtation app, I always forget to check gender.
Teod
The planet they’re on still orbits, so it’s not a fixed point. Almost nothing in space is a fixed point.
Enai
You can scratch that “almost”. I’m not even sure how one might define a fixed point in space, were such a thing to exist.
Fallingfeather
The middle of the universe, maybe? Everything would be expanding away from that point, so theoretically it would be fixed.
Enai
There is no “middle of the universe”. If you define “The point from where everything expands” as the “middle” thats *everywhere*. Every point in the known universe sees everywhere else (that’s far enough away) accelerate away from it.
See here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expansion_of_the_universe
Teod
Tidally locked bodies and geostationary satellites can be considered fixed points.
JoB
> There is no “middle of the universe”.
There’s nothing keeping you from tossing a marker somewhere into the universe and using it as your definition of “the middle of the universe”. (Since the universe doesn’t have an edge you can measure your omphalos’ distance from, there wouldn’t be any geometric counterproof to that statement.) All the laws of physics say is that they won’t prefer the reference system attached to it above others in any way. And it tends to be difficult to conduct an experiment without effectively using the laboratory table as your personally-hallowed frame of reference.
Enai
That won’t work for me, @JoB, because that pesky marker moves with different speeds and in different directions when me and cousin Throckmorton (who zips about at some fraction of the speed of light) compare notes.
Also, Throcky tried to use his skateboard as *his* marker of the middle of the universe, set it down right next to my more conventional sphere of uniform density, and the damn thing already moved, like, an entire astronomic unit! Very unsatisfactory 🙁
JoB
> cousin Throckmorton (who zips about at some fraction of the speed of light)
Well, since only inertial frames of reference have that guarantee of equal value, there’s two possibilities: Either at least one of you has to forfeit the contest, or you’ll never meet again to quarrel, anyway. 😛
un_pogaz
No, orbits are too small. Even a close star at 4 ly are so far away that being at the two extremes of an orbit does not change anything in the position on the sky (at least, not in a significant way)
Marcie
It might also change position in the sky over the course of a year. Some constellations are only visible during certain seasons, so theoretically Mecca could end up below the horizon line because Dirtball is pointed away from it
JoB
And right after I made a remark about absent socks on the previous page, they get paraded in our sight on this one … 😀
Ah, Trifolium repens, our old invasive bane … !
malmo
I must know…is this actually clover or is it one of those avian homeplanet tube worm plants
JoB
There’s a wall between the “backyards” of avian and human housings, probably to keep Terran and avian biomes separated – a part of keeping the incompatible biochemistries well-sorted, I’d guess.
… which, of course, seems to be somewhat at odds with Talita joining two Terrans there … but then again, it’s not like she has to wear her suit to safely visit the Touati-Sharpe household, either. Or them hers, for that matter.
Feather
I’m assuming that the incompatible biochemistries don’t cause issues at a low level, otherwise the alien species wouldn’t be able to live together despite being able to share air mixes. But even without taking the different bio-molecules into account, the avian plants probably want very different soil conditions to the terran ones! IDK if there would be any issues with the humans sitting in the avian park, but as humans can safely visit the avian planet (and can have relationships with avians) there shouldn’t be massive issues – maybe the three of them just prefer the more familiar plant life.
WoomySans
*in announcer voice* It’s time to PEEL! THAT! BONE!
Marcie
BONE PEELING TIME
Napkinkat
I imagine that finally getting the velvet off feels good lol. Or when the antlers finally shed I wonder if it feels like when you have a loose tooth and it finally comes out! I love how Gillie and Idrisah interact they’re so cute together :3