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When Feldspar first touches the sky, the emotion they feel isn't excitement or exhiliration. Their heart races with adrenaline, but when they seem close enough to touch the stars, everything pauses and all they can feel is relief.
Finally, they think, this is where home is.
They come crashing down with a broken leg and a concussion, but no head trauma could make them forget the feeling of finally being able to be among the stars. The one place they’ve visited, after exploring the whole of Timber Hearth, that feels like home.
Injuries can’t keep them down for long. They’re up on their feet sooner than even Slate would be comfortable with, badgering the engineer about their next trip. There’s a new fire in their eyes, and they know whenever Gossan looks at them they’re scared Feldspar is going to burn themself alive before they can tame it.
They don’t understand. Feldspar loves Gossan, but Gossan only turned their eyes upwards because they were following Feldspar’s lead.
Slate’s boots might as well be filled with lead with how determined they are to stay on the ground, but at least they’re just as stubborn as Feldspar when it comes to achieving spaceflight. No amount of scolding or punishment from Rutile can dissuade either of them.
Hornfels has always had their head in the clouds, but even they urge for caution when it comes to spaceflight. They tear up whenever Feldspar gets back with more scars than they had before, which is always.
Esker tells Feldspar to do what feels right. Behind closed doors, Feldspar hears them telling Gneiss about how Feldspar seems to be trying to join the stars, not journey amongst them. They don’t mention it the next time they’re face to face, or the time after that, or ever. But they think about it.
They think about it a lot.
Feldspar orbits Timber Hearth, and then they land on the Attlerock, and they realize they aren’t sure they want to go back. But they promised Hornfels some samples, so they gather some moon dust and a few rocks and try to convince themself that they’re happy to be on Timber Hearth again.
Hornfels is fascinated by the ruins Feldspar talks about. Feldspar exaggerates the story for the hatchlings, but it’s Hornfels who knocks on their door in the middle of the night asking for more details. Feldspar is more than happy to ramble on about their discoveries, though whenever Hornfels returns to their cabin Feldspar makes them promise that they’ll try to get some sleep.
Every time Esker asks how they’re doing, Feldspar laughs. “I’m fine, Esker! Better than ever!”
Then they leave Timber Hearth again, and remember how it feels to fly. They visit the Attlerock, bringing back whatever Hornfels requests over and over, and then they move on to the Ash Twin. Their ship nearly gets wrecked by the sandflow, but Feldspar still drags their feet when Gossan gets on the radio and tells them to come back.
On Timber Hearth, Gossan asks, “Why do you keep getting yourself hurt?”
Feldspar looks up at the stars, and tries to come up with a response as Gossan carefully wraps up their newest injury. None of the answers they can come up with are satisfying, so Gossan leaves without one.
Brittle Hollow’s silhouette in the sky calls to them, and so Feldspar launches the next day, with bruises that haven’t quite healed and injuries that haven’t had the chance to scar over. They underestimate the gravitational pull of the black hole, and one of their landing gear snaps clean off upon impact, but Feldspar sets up camp anyways and spends the next several days on a planet with nobody else. They find some artifacts Hornfels might like, and a Nomai toy the newest hatchling will definitely enjoy, but most of their time is spent just barely skimming the surface of the black hole, testing the limits of the universe.
Feldspar does their best to duct tape the broken pieces of their ship together. The landing gear is beyond repair, but the cracks forming in the cockpit are definitely worth the time it takes to slap some tape on them. They use the tiny toolkit they have to fix the warped metal of their ship, and then they take off again. This time, they head back to Ash Twin, making sure to land on the north pole instead of risking the equator again.
Well, near the north pole. The actual north pole has an enormous, flowering structure that pulses with an eerie glow that Feldspar lands next to. If they were able to fit it in their ship, Hornfels would beg for Feldspar to bring it back to them. It seems to go on beneath the surface, too, but where it might be leading, Feldspar has no idea.
There’s a few different towers built along the equator. While the tides of the sandflow are steady, Feldspar spends their time exploring them. What purpose they might have served to the Nomai, it’s impossible to tell, though it was clearly something important.
There’s a tower with a painting of the black hole and some Nomai writing, discussing what Feldspar can only assume to be Brittle Hollow. The tower with trees from Timber Hearth doesn’t have any of that glowing purple text, but it’s not hard to make the connection that each tower is supposed to be a planet.
The tower resembling a cyclone is likely the tower for Giant’s Deep, considering the constant storm Hornfels theorizes it has. The two towers beside each other are definitely meant to resemble the Twins, but that means the last tower is Dark Bramble. The main features of it are a wall with flowing Nomai text and a hallway filled with cacti. Not a pleasant implication for what might be inside the farthest planet from the sun, but it wasn’t like it had a welcoming aura before this.
When the sand begins to flow back to Ash Twin, Feldspar sits beside their ship and watches the sand rise. It doesn’t swallow them up like Gossan was worried it might. Instead, Feldspar and their ship slowly rise with the tides, watching the sun up above. By the time Feldspar remembers they were going to gather artifacts from the Ash Twin, the sand has risen too far to collect anything more than the grains of sand around them.
Feldspar heads back to Timber Hearth. Slate is clearly frustrated by the damage done to the ship, and Gossan is clearly frustrated by the damage done to Feldspar. “It’s just a few bruises,” Feldspar reassures them. “I’ve had a lot worse, you know that.”
Gossan meets their eyes, emotion swirling in their pupils, and then they let out a long sigh. “As long as you get back home.”
Feldspar doesn’t say anything about space being their home. The gravity of Timber Hearth feels like a prison, and Feldspar can’t wait to escape it.
The artifacts from Brittle Hollow are handed over to Hornfels, and Riebeck seems ecstatic about the Nomai toy Feldspar picked up for them. Feldspar tells stories about what they found around the bonfire, and the hatchlings are all amazed, as they always are. Afterwards, they crowd around the pilot, begging for more tales. Feldspar is only able to escape them with the help of Gneiss shooing them back into the hatchling cabin. With a quick thank you, Feldspar makes their escape.
Slate has the ship fixed within 24 hours. All the frustration of Feldspar breaking it has disappeared, and now Slate is rambling about the sturdier landing gear they’ve installed. Feldspar chats with them, but the entire time Feldspar is itching to get back into space.
As the sun sets on Timber Hearth, Feldspar launches from the landing pad, and the tightness in their chest vanishes. Floating among the stars is where they belong.
Ember Twin has a few different things to explore on its surface. A crashed Nomai ship, a ruin Feldspar assumes is impossible to get into, some sort of locator on the south pole. They spend days going over every last inch of it, trying to find a way into the building with another one of those flowering structures that seem to pulse with energy, but they don’t find anything. Feldspar is disappointed, but there’s too much energy in them to stay put for long.
They try the quantum moon. They’ve tried it dozens of times before, and just like always, they go right through. It disappears the second Feldspar breaches the fog.
Giant’s Deep is next. When Feldspar breaks through the cloud layer, they aren’t sure what they’re expecting. The sight of cyclones and an ocean bigger than Timber Hearth takes their breath away. They search the islands, finding more of those Nomai ruins and picking up a few artifacts, and then, just to see what it’s like, they throw themself into a cyclone.
It’s exhilarating, feeling the frame of their ship shake like it’s about to split into two, and watching as the winds pick them up and throw them out of the atmosphere. Feldspar has already fallen in love with space a million different ways, and this is only one more thing added to that list.
Riding the cyclones a couple more times makes the metal of their ship creak uncomfortably. Feldspar begrudgingly heads back to Timber Hearth, drops their ship off with Slate, and then takes a hike to the grove on the south pole of the planet.
One of the older hatchlings is there, practicing their flute. When they see Feldspar, they just wave.
The silence between them is comfortable as Feldspar carves into a branch plucked from one of the trees. Eventually, Gabbro (Feldspar thinks that’s their name) puts down the flute and starts asking about how to carve wood. So Feldspar hands them the knife, gives them a few rules to keep themself safe while carving, and gently shows them how to make shapes emerge from the wood.
When their ship is fixed, Feldspar takes off again.
They visit each planet, over and over again. All of them except Dark Bramble. Gossan gets a ship of their own, between the repairs Slate always has to make for Feldspar. Then they set up the repair station on the moon, and Esker is more than happy to plant some trees and enjoy some isolation on the Attlerock. Feldspar drops by for repairs frequently, and Hornfels keeps asking for them to come home.
I already am home, Feldspar doesn’t say. They drop off some artifacts from Ember Twin that seem to have some sort of warping capabilities, talk with Gossan, playfully wrestle with Slate. Gabbro tells them about the quantum moon, and a project they’re planning for the quantum grove. Feldspar grins, pats them on the back, and then they take off again.
When they reach the core of Giant’s Deep, they sit underneath the water for a while, watching their oxygen meter fall. They can feel the overwhelming pressure of the water above, the intense gravity from being near the center of such a large planet, and yet they would rather stay here than return to the comfortable life they have on Timber Hearth.
This is where they make the decision to go to Dark Bramble. Something within them is hoping they never go back.