Benie & Bell Intro + Stars001

Benie & Bell: The microstories of two souls in eternal orbit.

The Intro:

After writing the Astronomical Grief series in the second half of 2024 AND how 2024 ended - good lawd - imma be honest. I needed a break.

So I committed to fiction. I’ve been reading it. I’ve been building a facts-based fictional universe alongside other dope and nerdy worldbuilders with guidance from the phenomenal Dr. Moiya. And after years of being a narrative non-fiction writer, I’m playing in the fiction pool.

Benie & Bell is my first published fiction series. Microstory felt like a format within which I could practice my narrative brevity. My goal is to do no more than 500 words, and usually keep it under 400.

Thank you for being here to read it. I’m inviting comments (read: not foolishness) and sharing! What I love about microstory are all the unknowns readers can fill in, and I dig some good co-creation.

Stars001

The moment their orbits linked, they knew.

This was it. It would be eons of a swirling dance together.

There was no telling who else would show up, what else would form around them. What would happen in the neighborhood.

What was certain is that they were a luminous, binary pair now. It was time to settle in and get familiar.

Over time, as smaller objects were pulled to their orbit by the double-gravity they produced, planets, moons, and other cosmic objects found themselves forming or locking into their deep well of space-time.

It all evolved into a committed crew of cosmic entities. The pair at the center, glorious.

Now, they have been in their orbital dance so long that they can tell what is going on around them by the way it effects change in the other. One knows when the other's fusion cycle is shifting. One knows when the other has something new nearby, pulling on its gravity.

Mercifully, there is no expectation of major interactions happening that could change their pairing. They knew it was possible, yet eons and eons in, they are older, evolved, and still bound together.

Since the population of their space-time well has increased, they wonder if they'll be noticed. By other pairs, other systems, or far beyond their specific locale. Their dance is something special, at least to them. Could it possibly be special outside of the bond and the immediate results of it?

--

In another part of the cosmos, beings who use special tools to look out beyond their location in the universe spot this impervious pair. Something about their cadence, the balance of their orbit, what has formed around them simply because they are existing together—these beings find a particular beauty in it.

Not far from salty ocean waters, the beings chart the pair's location, and name each star and the binary system for ease of reference.

The system is named The B-Stellar Binary. The stars names? Benie and Bell.