End of chapter. I'll be drawing AMAs this time, now that I am safely done with summer conventions and moving and travelling and all that bullshit! Submit questions over here!
Transcript
Talita stares at the blanket stretched between her hands, stunned into speechlessness. She finally turns back to Bip's avatar in disbelief. It's perched on the sideways door frame of one of the crew cabins that electrician worms are crawling into.
Talita: You’re getting rid of it, too??
Bip: Ngilick kept the blanket alive, and they're dead. I was going to bury it with them.
Talita looks down at the blanket in her hands, a terrible, bottomless, unanswerable sadness welling in her eyes.
Talita: Would it…
She pulls it closer to her chest, hesitant.
Talita: …Be weird if I asked to keep this?
Bip's avatar moves after the worms, the sliding door threshold cutting a dark groove between the two halves of its immaterially two dimensional body. In the cabin beyond, dents and scuffs left by the previous locations of tacked down furniture trace the lives of its previous inhabitants with their absence. The avatar looks back at Talita with an odd, wistful expression.
Bip: Take good care of it, Talita.
54 thoughts on “Runaway to the Stars: Page 210”
holly...!
bip seems like such an aloof and standoffish character, i’m glad we got to see them be so vulnerable in this chapter
PlasticRaptors
Oghhh gods I love this page. It’s rare to see Bip show an emotion besides casual amusement and mild irritation and I’m living for it. Also very sweet to see Talita hang onto a little heritage, even if not much.
Apollo235
I know we’re all more focused on the implications and plot of this page. but I just need to say that Talita looks so cute but at the same time gorgeous in this page!
thegriffin88
It’s a lot to think about, the identity you’ve been denying your whole life. Because of circumstances Talita doesn’t really know who she is.
Septemberdale
Well that’s a bit dismissive, don’t you think? She knows that she’s Talita! She would be someone very different were she raised amongst her own species!
Jaybee
It occurs to me that Bip may have had a real cavalier attitude about everything before their depressurization. The they almost died, their whole crew died. There’s got to be some real survivors guilt buried underneath all those flippant remarks.
halley
OUGHHHHHHH both of themm my heart exploding
also. without any real ecosystem, buried bodies would not decompose on dirtball. i would be very concerned about the inevitable if eventual discovery of several centaur bodies buried in regolith in a place where there absolutely should not have been that many centaurs in the first place. would be a very interesting unsolved case in a few decades. a mystery for the ages, truly
petra
oh my god that would be so eerie, like imagine they’re found after they hire more centaurs to work there, it would be like a creepy murder mystery
mat
ohhhh, tears in my eyes
Gar G
Aww…
Andrew Lindsey
This talk of bodies has me wondering if there have been previous times that ships delivered to the scrapyard here have had bodies in them, and if the operation here has any standard procedures in place for dealing with bodies found on ships to be scrapped. It appears that whoever is delivering these ships to them doesn’t bother clearing out bodies first. Is there a graveyard on Dirtball full of unknown corpses, or do they recycle them into the biosphere?
bryn
tbh im thinking finding bodies is the rare /exception/ not the norm. this is like a car junkyard or normal scrapyard, bodies should not be the normal thing seen but sometimes Crime happens and bodies end up aboard the ships and get discovered when there wasnt supposed to be, but its not common. I imagine that when the Runaway was picked up and they ran its ID, it was showing as empty and no passengers. if it had shown as potentially having passengers/crew aboard, then the collecting agency that picked them up would have taken them to a different location. thats just my theory though
bryn
now that i think about it more too- i dont think dirtball would have any graveyard, or at least i wouldnt expect it – if sophont bodies were found aboard ships, they would have to contact authorities, who would probably come and take the remains for investigation and return to their next of kin, and properly put them to rest wherever they came from (thats best case scenario, worst case if no identity is found, go to proper channels like a crematorium service? fuzzy on the details but strongly feel they would leave dirtball). im guessing this based on the fact that junkyards and scrapyards dont have cemeteries, but i admit things could be different in space of course. they might find non-sophont remains and occasionally have to incinerate them though if i could guess. they almost certainly have methods in place for livestock as they have a small amount of livestock on dirtball.
MoonyBeasty
Ohhhhh my gosh this page and the past few ones are making me FEEL things.
Fluff
I love the contrast this has to Talita just throwing away her antler velvet. She’s probably never considered that part of her being anything but an annoyance.
SheTheTDE
Talita’s thoughts: “This is a piece of my culture!”
purrpetualentropy
I also wonder if she’s thinking, like … “this part of my body can be beautiful; can have meaning”. We know she struggles with dysmorphia so it might be important to her to see anatomy she has being treated as valuable.
Vinemaple
It’s not her culture. Talita grew up on Nexus Jovia.
Probably more like, “Someone like me made this… a lot of people like me made this. And it’s something actual Humans could never do.”
Phasma Felis
Adopted children do sometimes feel, or want to feel, a connection to their “native” culture even if they were raised completely outside of it.
Fallingfeather
Bip knows she can be trusted with it ;u;
zaratustra
Bip absolutely could have removed that furniture on their own. Well, could have done it physically.
PostMelody
I hope Talita learns how to cure her own velvet someday. I wonder if Ngilick’s blanket grew at a different rate from homeplanet matriarchs’ blankets because of irregular velvet cycling.
malmo
Bip said every year, so probably not. I have to imagine the Runaway has a species appropriate light cycle, which may not be as easy with a mixed sophont crew…
Corbin
I wonder how one would go about taking good care of a centaur velvet blanket? How do you wash it, how to repair it?
The Opossum Witch
i assume similar to suede or calf skin: spot cleaning with a damp cloth or mild detergent/leather cleaner for harder stains. Leather conditioner to keep it soft or re-oil the skin for waterproofing
Cat'O Moss
Aliens are referred to, at least by humans, with a neutral pronoun (they/them is common in Jovian, xey/xem is common in Martian) unless the person has a specific gender they go by. A good example is in earlier pages the temps keep calling Talita “they”, despite her trying to correct that she’s a “her” (Page 84 + Page 91 you can see how uncomfortable Talita is, for numerous reasons).
Enai
Bip’s plan to bury the blanket with the body of Ngilick reminds me of the Rromani custom of burning the belongings of the deceased. I wonder if it has precedent in nomadic centaur culture.
Actually, I’m now wondering how centaurs usually deal with clans going extinct. I imagine that while probably rare, it must happen sometimes, mustn’t it? War, famine, various catastrophes surely are things that do happen on their homeworld, with all the attendant deaths. Do the other centaurs commemorate extinct clans at all? At least those they traded with and/or admired for some reason? Are there centaur historians painstakingly reconstructing ancient velvet blankets, trying to decipher scripts long forgotten?
Vinemaple
I can’t believe we (I?) didn’t think of that… Bip isn’t just “disposing” of their clan’s bodies, they’re preparing for the most respectful burial they can manage, under the circumstances. I wonder if Talita will offer to assist with any ceremony Bip might want to perform. Too bad getting Gillie and Idrisah into spacesuits to join them would be too suspicious…
Also, notice that Bip uses “they” pronouns for Ngilick… exactly what kind of clan were these smuggler pirates? There are multiple possibilities according to the Centaur culture page… or maybe Bip is referring (oddly) to the entire clan.
Shadow Wasser
In Jovian English, all xenosophonts use the singular “they”.
Aleris
IIRC most nonhuman sophonts get referred to with they/them by default when using english. Talita’s exceptional for being a centaur with a set human gender and she/her pronouns
Feather
Yeah, it makes sense because alien genders aren’t equivalent to human genders, even when they do have comparable biological sexes. Centuars are a pretty good example of that, because they have two sexes which we can equate to human ones, but more gender roles. It seems like to some extent matriarch is a different gender to female worker, and in some cultures a female worker is considered to be the same neuter gender as a male worker.
ArBe
I’m pretty sure they use gender-neutral pronouns for non-humans because that’s the established convention in this dialect of English, regardless of their sex. It’s been mentioned that Talita identifying with her “corresponding” human-constructed gender is the exception rather than the rule.
IncompleteMachine
I think most readers presumed that the bodies had already been removed from the ship before she came down, or had been blown into space when whatever wrecked them happened (still have the nasty suspicion it was a mass murder).
Lilac
If objects are meaningless without the people who used and cherish them, then you simply must find new people to use and cherish them….
Phlosioneer
I just had a horrible thought. The bodies… must have been heavier than the furniture. Bip…… Bip, what did you do? It may need a therapist after this.
Varyon
This was mentioned before, and I suggested that the bodies may have become mummified from exposure to hard vacuum and low temperature (basically, freeze-drying). Considering water typically makes up a great deal of the weight of living things, so they would have been easier to move around once dried out. I don’t know how much of a centaur’s body weight is water, but for humans I think it hovers around 60%. If centaurs are similar, you’re still looking at 200-400 kg, well above the stated 25 kg limit of the worms. But the worms may have been able to drag them out, depending on their locations.
evInAu
I dread to think that Bip may have needed to…dissasemble the bodies somewhat to move them properly. Presumably, not being organic, they’d be less squeamish about the nuts and bolts (or ligaments and tendons, perhaps) of such a procedure. I just can’t see how else Bip would’ve been able to move bodies which even when dessicated must still weigh hundreds of kilograms, not to mention being awkwardly large and difficult to manouevre, especially if they needed Talita’s help to move furniture which probably isn’t as heavy as that.
Skadoosh
Alternatively, they could have used the worms to tie ropes around the bodies, then used larger machinery to drag them out while using the worms to steer them around corners.
Chase Wanderstar
My guess? Had to watch them slowly mummify in the vacuum, then painstakingly-slowly dragged them out.
IncompleteMachine
No its not that traumatic: Bip was stuck in the phones, essentially in a medical coma. the bodies dried out before the ship ever made it to the scrapyard.
Chase Wanderstar
Oh right. Well, that’s a small mercy, at least.
Guy1
My guess is since the vacuum froze them they became brittle and bip had to break them into smaller pieces to carry them out😬.
Jay Cea
Okay, now Bip’s whole situation just feels so tragic… hit by an unknown object (if/when we learn about that it’s gonna be even MORE tragic), killing all of xer friends instantly, and splitting xer mind into hundreds of pieces. How confused must xey have been? how long were xey in that split state, before the ship could’ve been fixed? Burying the bodies of xer friends, throwing everything away, having to work to erase xer existence, and the existence of xer crew… and if Talita’s current plan for the ship happens (with the limited fuel) how much longer still will xey be alone, just drifting through space inch by inch as xey have nothing to do but notice the gap xer crew would’ve filled? Jay, you’ve done an amazing job making a character feel so tragic with almost nothing but subtext and reading between the lines,,, I feel so hard for a character who in name and appearance is on the surface kind of goofy .
Eux
🥺 auuugh. my emotions
friendly spacer
Interesting that the transcript describes Bip’s expression as “odd”. It’s definitely a peculiar one. This reaction joins the barebones yet sincere “Thank you, Talita” (a response to restoring their connection to the ship iirc) as Bip’s character defining moments for me. Sometimes less is more.
Vinemaple
I was thinking the same thing. Brief but real… when Bip drops the act, you know they mean it. And it’s a sign of trust and respect, because they have full control over their voice and appearance.
And those eyes, and that eyebrow! It’s odd for BIP to show this kind of emotion openly, but like “Claire” posted in the previous page: “While things are time-sensitive, xey can control a great deal of their tone and belie their true feelings, when xey choose to.”
Arcstone
dnnaaaaaw.
Sad bip. :c
RottenFruitz
Augh. Aw man. RIP Ngilick 💔😭
furubatsu
Bip was “going to” bury it with the Matriarch? So the centaurs aren’t buried yet? Boy I sure hope nobody stumbles upon a morgue of sophonts just in the middle of an isolated space colony. That’s a horror story waiting to happen for one unlucky intern.
Vinemaple
I assume the bodies are hidden in the pit with the Runaway… nobody’s supposed to be there, there’s not supposed to be anything there, so it’s reasonably safe to assume that nobody will “stumble upon” them, at least not until Mel starts looking really closely at the upcoming geosurvey images…
JoB
Side-comic idea: Yao finally decides to follow up on xer discovery, stumbles into one dead centaur, and passes the rest of the weekend avoiding the other temps like the bossicidal plague.
Vinemaple
Said side-comic isn’t released until after the second book goes public, making it a huge, recontextualizing reveal that after Yao discovered the worksite and the body, Bip reached out and convinced xer to secretly help Talita and the Touati-Sharpes somehow.
JoB
Well someone has to return the vacuum suits the Touati-Sharpes use to get to the ship to the lockers inside the habitat, or else the gig’d be up instantly …
JoB
Test …
Ampersand: <a> Duplicate: <> PRE: