Sentai has a minion!

Moonlight Starbright the Penginite

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At sundown, Sentai gathered her charts off the kitchen table. At least, it might have been her kitchen table. A long time ago. Atlases and books had taken over its surfaces ears back, and her collection of brass astrolabes and armillary spheres had migrated permanently a few months later. The nomadic instruments gathered at different ends of the table depending on where Sentai spread out her charts, and today they teetered at the corner by the window on a large atlas titled succinctly: Universe. Sentai owned better atlases.

By the time Sentai had rolled up her charts, the candy floss of the sunset had drifted apart, and the bright pink and gold the sun had painted the clouds faded to a deepening violet. Astraeos, the twilight god, called his children one by one now, and the stars began to peer out in the night, only the bravest showing their faces.

Sentai gathered her telescope, packed up her charts, and selected a medium-sized astrolabe to tuck into her rucksack. She added her journal and tin of pencils, and at the last second, she grabbed a small bag of chocolates. As the twilight darkened and the night grew stiller, Sentai began the trek to her hill at the edge of the woods.

The fortune of finding her hill never escaped her. The wood had grown up in a hollow not quite anything enough to develop, serving as a buffer against light pollution and ensuring her hill would remain hers. Moreover, the hollow in which the copse stood kept the tops of the trees from interfering too much with her view of the northern horizon. The hill had become hers, and all her friends knew they could find her there every clear night between dusk and dawn.

Nearly two hours after astronomical dusk, Sentai noticed a streak of light across her telescope, something fast and bright like a meteor, but far too large. Then, it disappeared, burning up in the atmosphere. Sentai frowned, but she checked the time on her watch and made a notation in her journal, estimating the magnitude at 2.5. Definitely some kind of fluke.

A few minutes later, she saw another one, even brighter. Maybe a 1. This troubled Sentai. She didn't want to think there could be an asteroid apocalypse, but she could think of no other astronomical explanation for such large and bright meteors. They ought to be meteorites though. They had to be too large to break apart into dust.

Then, she saw another, and peering at it, she noticed it weaving, bobbing in the air, hovering. Not a UFO. Those aren't real. It came closer, and as it aimed itself at her, two more growing points of light appeared at its side. They were each a different shade of white: one pink, one green, and one blue. In a panic, Sentai pushed back from her telescope, falling to all fours and scrambling backwards.

They were only a few inches from her telescope.

The bluish one shifted, both in light and position, and then it streaked toward her. In a shrill voice, it screamed, "Hi!"

Sentai yelped.

The pink light bounced. "Hello! Hi!"

The blue one said, "What are you doing?"

With a twinkling movement, the green one darted forward and landed on the telescope as its shine diminished to a glow. Sentai could see a tiny person, clothed in something like cobwebs, walking along the length of her telescope. "No!" she launched herself toward it. "You'll ruin it!"

Brightening, the green person became an orb again and flew back into the air. "Hang on! What's wrong with you?"

"That telescope was very precisely positioned. It's taken me weeks of observations and calculations to decide where to put it tonight."

"I don't know what that means," said the pink light.

Sentai snuffled and gingerly checked her telescope. It took her a moment, but in a few seconds, she repositioned it and made a few quick notes in her journal. Only then did she turn her face back to the shining lights and say, "What do you want?"

The green light said, "We see you out here every night."

"On our hill," the blue light chimed in.

Sentai frowned. "It's my hill."

"It was ours first."

The little lights landed on the telescope again, tilting it only the slightest bit under their weight. Withing moments, they looked like tiny, glowing people again. The pink one asked, "What is this for?"

"Looking at the stars."

"Can't you just look at them?" asked the green one. "They're right there."

"The far away stars." Sentai chuffed again. "The ones you can't see with just your eyes."

"You mean, there's more of them than what you can see?"

"Of course."

In a flurry of tiny noise and colored sparks, all three began to scuffle, vying for a place at the lens. The telescope dropped several inches and swung a little to the north. It could take hours before Sentai got her telescope back in position. "Enough!"

The three lights stopped.

"What are you?"

"We're fairies," one of them said.

"Show us how to use the - whatever this brass contraption is."

"It's a telescope," Sentai explained. The fairies allowed themselves to be shooed away while Sentai repositioned the telescope, and then she began to point out what their was to see through the lens. After the fairies got bored of staring at the Pleiades, Sentai decided that her observations for the evening could be set aside in favor of showing the little fairies everything there was to see. They glowed brighter with each new galaxy and planet Sentai showed them, and when at last the sky became a twinge too grey, Sentai packed up her scope, sure the three fairies would join her again the next night.[/center]

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♫

Don't close your eyes
Or I might drift away
Under the night
Of never ending shapes
I'll be wishing off the blue
I'll still wanna send my stars
Heading for the moon

And, look
How we write
Over the white
Shadows may chase from behind
But just put them out of your mind, oh
Heading for the moon

♫
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[url="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v94/efinesse/subetapets/Sentai_by_Roefel.png"]x[/url][/center]

[center]Overlay by adamn - Story by hyperion
Art by Linxy - Quantum
CI by Bonic - User not found: spadey - duskflower[/center]