Planetologists generally define seasons on any planetary body by the values of average temperatures within particular regions of a temporal graph. Depending on the planets in question, temporal graphs (calendars) are broken into years/months/days, and the cardinal seasons may (depending on the world in question) occupy a temporal span of a few weeks, up to 437 years (in Earth-local reckoning.) On Bes (not to be confused with the Nemaean city of the same name), a season lasts for 503.0 days, as Bes maintains a Terran-standard 12-month calendar, the average month lasts for 41.9 days. Like all human-populated worlds, Bes is governed by its orbit around a G-spectrum dwarf star; its 2013-day year follows the seasonal pattern recognized on every human populated world. Bes is distinct in that it is one of the few human-inhabited worlds with an active biosphere of its own, and archeological remnants of a vanished culture. Because humanity has shed religious sentiment and left it like so many dried husks on the irradiated Ancestral Planet, seasonal changes have shifted in meaning, but the human talent for observing (and creating) patterns remains strongly entrenched in the collective Human mind. Bes, because of its striking resemblance to the Ancestral Planet, seems to tickle humanity’s atavistic impulses. Two moons, governing the tides of Bes’ single, globe-spanning ocean, appear to dance in their orbits…waltzing and dipping and bowing in complex, astrometric arabesques. Conjunctions are common, and so when conjunctions fall on significant days (such as solstices or equinoxes) the people of Bes take particular note. This spring, the moons, as seen by day, fell into alignment on the first day of the season. Few of Bes’ citizens took particular note, though some—the more poetically-inclined—marked this day in extremely personal (and yes, atavistic) ways. Season-inaugurating alignments are common (how could they be anything else in the presence of humans) but day-moons in alignment are something or a rare (and therefore, celebratory) event. It comes as no surprise that in the upcoming months, the datasphere will find itself crammed with images of the Spring Conjunction. I was there to see it. On Bes. I was there to holograph it and to sing ancient, reconstructed pagan songs, marking a spectacular day: one of more than 2000 days this year. * * * I have no clue who that narrator is, but he (she) apparently needed to say something about Bes and its two (as yet unnamed) moons. Bes, the city, has already hosted the action in my very first Nemaean story, and apparently, there is a second-Bes in that universe. A city. Hmmm… The image here, is a tweaked photograph. I took the initial photo last summer, while standing on the beach in Chicago’s Rogers Park area. I’d gone there (yep, with Corey) and took pictures of dead and dissolving pilings. I went there, with Corey, and spent quite some time getting my legs sand-blasted. I was, of course, wearing shorts, and I suspect my legs were stripped of their epithelial layers in no time flat. It was quite a prickly, but intriguing sensation. The moons weren’t there, though…they’re imports from elsewhere, and for those with sharp eyes, the larger moon may look familiar, since it’s also the ringed planet in my previous post. It’s been de-ringed here, and it’s appearance in the sky might imply that Bes is actually a moon circling that planet. Hmmm…things are getting interesting. As this marks the beginning of Spring (though Chicago temperatures have something else to say about that) I figured I’m mark the advent of Spring here. And so…here it is. As always, thank you for viewing, reading, and commenting, and I hope you’re all having a great week.