Rising

Knuckles watched Sonic pick out a handful of fruits. He offered some to the others, but Knuckles wasn't hungry anymore and Tails was back to looking rather tired. Knuckles watched him. It was easy to forget how much younger he was, and it had been a long day.

Sonic was still munching on his dessert, but he'd followed Knuckles' gaze. A soft smile ghosted across his face. "We ready here, then? I recall being told the big event happens just a bit after sunset."

Tails blinked and the double tails were suddenly back to animated wagging. "I need to get my telescope!" Apparently suddenly awake again, he made to dash off, stopped after only a few steps, turned back around, now to face Knuckles. "Um. If that's okay, with you, I mean?"

Knuckles blinked, again not quite sure what was going on. "What?"

Tails was coming back to stand next to him. "When we figured it's about an astronomical event, I decided to bring my telescope. I was looking forward to observing it. With the high altitude and non-existent light pollution, observation conditions are perfect on Angel Island. It's not a huge telescope, but we'll be able to see planetary rings and several moons of the individual planets." He frowned, studying Knuckles. "But I didn't think, maybe it's blasphemy to you or something? But your people knew they were planets, and -" He shrugged, timidly looking up at Knuckles now.

The echidna smiled. "Yes, we know they are planets, moving around the sun like our planet. Just very, very far away." Automatically, his eyes trailed over to skim the dimming horizon.

"I can bring'em closer, sort of," Tails ventured. "If you're up for it."

Why wouldn't he? Knuckles didn't quite see why there would be a problem, but it seemed thoughtful of Tails to ask all the same. "It's fine. Go ahead."

"Yes! Thank you!" He was traded a bright grin, blue eyes shining, then Tails dashed off. He was already a good bit away down the trail when he shouted something that Knuckles didn't quite catch but that made Sonic, just slightly more downhill, chuckle and grin.

"Yeah, right." The hedgehog turned to face Knuckles. "I really better help him carry his stuff; if anything gets dropped and damaged I won't hear the end of it for years." Knuckles made to follow him, but Sonic lifted a hand and shook his head. "I got it. You go find a good spot to view everything." He was gone in a flash of dark blue before Knuckles could think of a reply.

He shrugged to himself, in lack of anyone else's presence, and first of all made sure their campfire was completely extinguished. There was a cliff slightly uphill that he'd decided as his viewing spot already days ago, but if they were leaving for real now, they couldn't leave the fire on.

It took only a few minutes until his friends returned, Tails carrying a long tubular thing that was almost as tall as himself, Sonic lugging along something thin and silvery that Knuckles wasn't sure what to make of, but that looked a lot less heavy than whatever little Tails was struggling to carry.

Knuckles traded Sonic a frown for this obviously lazy division of load, but even before he could open his mouth, Sonic was laughing and shaking his head. "Hey, don't look at me like that; he refuses to let anyone else handle that one."

"It's really sensitive and expensive equipment! It doesn't take well to supersonic jostling." Tails actually was almost hugging that weird big tube.

Knuckles held out a hand. "Well, I don't do any supersonic jostling to important items."

The little fox frowned at him for a moment, then handed the thing over. Knuckles carefully lifted it up to rest on his shoulder, making sure to be gentle, but hold it securely if it was apparently so important to Tails.

Next to him, Sonic was spluttering. "You don't trust me to handle your expensive equipment, but you trust him?! What did I ever do to your stuff, Tails?!"

The fox gave him a weird look and shrugged. "Do you want an alphabetical list or one by order of magnitude?" Sonic just stared, and Knuckles fought to swallow a chuckle at the hedgehog's indignant look. Tails continued before either of them could say anything, though. "And technically, I don't trust him to handle it. I trust him to carry it."

"Fine," Sonic grumbled, holding the shiny bundle of sticks or whatever it was he was carrying out at Tails. "You can carry those. I'm gonna bring my own stuff."

Tails didn't protest against being handed the things, and he watched Sonic pick up his guitar with an expression that was amused rather than anything like mad. "Oh, now I'm not allowed to carry your guitar?"

"It's an expensive, sensitive piece of equipment," Sonic insisted seriously, cradling the instrument in his hold.

Knuckles wasn't sure whether to laugh or stare or shake his head at the antics, but suddenly both Sonic and Tails broke out laughing, and decided the matter for him.

"There! There it is!" Tails pointed up into the darkening sky, near shouting in excitement.

Weeks ago, Knuckles had felt some of that excitement, then he'd lost it, and now it was like Tails' shouting was all it took to suddenly bring it back full force as the first of the Five peeked out of the purple glow of dusk as a bright spark of silvery white. The first "star" to appear, because it was easily the brightest in the entire sky. "I see it!"

Tails had stopped gesturing, but was still grinning wildly. "It's actually late today. Sometimes you can see it during sunset already! That's why it gets nicknamed Evening Star."

Knuckles nodded. "We call it that, too." He found himself smiling at Tails. "But in some places and seasons, it can rise late in the night and stay into the morning."

Tails was nodding back at him, but somewhere to the side, Sonic groaned. "Now I've got two geeks..."

Next to Knuckles, Tails was frowning, but the echidna was faster this time. "Knowing the stars is important. You can never be lost anywhere if you know to read the sky."

Sonic shrugged, but he was grinning, too. "I could say something about how often some of us here have gotten lost sky or no sky, but, party day." The hedgehog's eyes returned to gazing up into the sky, too. "And it sure is a bright one."

Tails seemed pacified enough, and Knuckles' own eyes had already focused back on the Evening Star, now at full sparkling brightness. Darkness was falling quickly now, the purple fading into a dark blue. The eastern sky was already fully black. Soon the next planet should become visible.

It took only minutes until the sky was fully dark, proudly showing off all of the planets as well as a myriad of stars. Unexpectedly his friends were mostly quiet and Knuckles was able to observe the Five all lined up in the sky, as he'd seen in the old drawings predicting the event. Like bright shiny pearls on an invisible string.

Tails was whispering something about extraordinarily clear skies and observation conditions to Sonic, who ushered him over to where the telescope had been set up. For a moment Knuckles wondered if Sonic of all people was trying to make sure he was left alone to enjoy a moment of quiet, but once Tails was busy playing with his telescope Sonic too ended up just standing and watching the sky, and Knuckles wondered if maybe in some way Sonic too liked a short moment to stargaze by himself in peace. He'd claimed to enjoy sunsets, maybe this was similar? It couldn't last long, but Knuckles would take what silence he could get here.

The silence actually lasted another minute until Sonic came to stand next to Knuckles. "Tails is right; your sky is epic."

"It's the high altitude and lack of light pollution," Tails said, still fiddling with the telescope. Turned out the weird silvery sticks made up the stand for the thing.

"Or it's Ancient Echidna Floating Island magic."

Knuckles finally looked down again properly, raising a brow at the hedgehog for this statement.

Sonic caught his eyes and shrugged. "No?"

The Guardian opened his mouth to say… something, but Sonic caught him off with a wave of his hand.

"Don't give away your secrets! Keep the magic alive!"

Knuckles laughed.

Behind his telescope, Tails unsuccessfully tried to hide a yawn.

Next to Knuckles, Sonic grinned, but said nothing.

The Guardian gestured up at the sky. "I'm going to stay and watch until they set, but you don't have to if you're tired."

Tails turned to look over at him and Sonic warily, but the hedgehog shook his head. "Nah. Once in a lifetime event, this, right? For culture and science." He looked between Knuckles and Tails. "We can sleep tomorrow."

Tails was smiling again, one hand resting easily on top of his telescope. "Technically," he quipped, "they set tomorrow."

Knuckles frowned. Tails had seemed so well informed, and to him this was science, how could he make that mistake? "They set in a few hours, well before sunrise," he corrected carefully.

Tails blinked in the darkness. "Oh. Oh! No, wait, that's not what I meant." He laughed. "You see, in our calendar, the new day starts at midnight."

That seemed totally stupid. And random, too. "Why?"

Sonic broke out laughing. "Good question!"

Tails shrugged. "Someone defined it this way? It had to start somewhere." He studied Knuckles. "When does a new day start in your calendar?"

"At first light of dawn. The dimming of the stars."

"That makes a ton more sense," Sonic decided. "Can we adopt his calendar, Tails? I mean, it has everything. Holidays full of excitement, science holidays celebrating planets, and days start in the morning. You have to admit it's clearly superior."

Knuckles didn't bother pointing out that what Sonic so casually termed "excitement" had damn near killed him, or that it had not actually been part of the holiday. Sonic didn't allow it to ruin his day, and Knuckles could recognise a gift when he saw one. At least, he hoped he could.

Turned out he didn't need to point anything out, because Tails did. "The excitement was my fault. I wanted to do sight seeing."

Sonic groaned. "Chaos. Bro." He flicked a glance at Knuckles, apparently noticed his expression and amended the exasperated address to "Guys! That's not what I meant and don't pretend you don't know, because we've been through this already. Come on, it's an island-wide holiday. No guilt trips allowed. All guilt trips have been officially cancelled. Only fun stuff allowed. Good? Good." He pointed at Tails' telescope. "You've been hogging that thing. Come on, if we're staying up long as this beautiful Alignment lasts, you may as well show me some cool science. You said planet rings? Let us see some planet rings." He patted at Knuckles' shoulder. "I'm sure Knux here would love to see them too, right?"

Knuckles nodded, and not even entirely to humour his friends. He remembered Tails' words about the telescope. "Maybe some moons, too?", he ventured carefully. He didn't even know other planets had moons before.

Tails beamed. "Coming right up!" He bent over his telescope to make some adjustments. "Here, come see!" He was looking at Knuckles when he said it, but turned out in the few seconds that had passed, Sonic had moved to stand right behind Tails and his telescope.

"He'll have to wait; I'm obviously first in line." Sonic was grinning again, pointing out their positions.

"Sonic!" Tails frowned in protest.

Unexpectedly Knuckles found a grin tugging at the corners of his own mouth. "It's fine, Tails. I can wait for a moment." He turned to Sonic. "Just, you know, don't hog the telescope, hedgehog."

Sonic laughed, and tried to cover it up by bending to gaze into the viewing part. He whistled through his teeth. "You can see several of them at once!"

Knuckles flicked a gaze up at where they sat so very close together in the sky. "Obviously?"

Tails giggled. "He's not all wrong, you know," he said. "A telescope has a very narrow field of view; normally you can't see several planets in it at the same time. Even now I can't fit all five. I've got three of them right now."

"Actually, one is about to escape," Sonic said. "The red one is slipping out at the top."

"Oh. Already?" Tails pushed Sonic away from the telescope. "Let me."

Sonic laughed. "Sure."

Tails adjusted something. "Here, good to go again." He stepped back from his telescope, and made a point of standing between it and Sonic now, waving at Knuckles. "Here, your turn."

"I wasn't going to keep him," Sonic argued.

Knuckles grinned as he made his way over, but whatever he'd have thought up to say to that was forgotten about when he bent to look through the ocular and instead of the stars he'd expected he saw one overly large reddish star-like dot and two much bigger - circles. Discs of light? Planets, for real, not stars. Small, obviously very far away, but this looked closer to what Mobius looked from space then what a star looked like in the sky.

One was mostly orange and red with some whites, wrapped around it in what seemed to be stripes. He could spot several stars, actual pinprick of light stars, very close to it, too, shining a bright white to offset the diffuse orange glow surrounding the planet.

The other was more uniform in colour, a pale yellowish orange, and as Tails had promised, it had rings surrounding it. They circled it at a sharp angle, and they were throwing an actual shadow onto the planet.

"Wow," he mumbled.

"See the rings?" Tails was smiling; he could hear that.

"Yeah. They're much bigger than the planet! They have to be huge! Can you walk on them?" He could imagine that, walking along the rings, floating in space high above their mother planet, a vantage point to look down and out into space at the same time.

"No." The smiling tone was still there. "They're not solid, it just seems that way from here because we're far away and this is only a small telescope with relatively low resolution. They're dust and small rocks floating in space. But it's a nice thought. I think you'd have a great view if you could walk on them."

"Maybe we could hop from rock to rock," Sonic suggested.

"I think they're a lot farther apart than you can jump," Tails said. "Also, there's no air."

"I could go super."

Knuckles frowned. "To hop around on space rock rings?" It wasn't quite what you'd use the sacred Emeralds for.

"Come on, tell me you wouldn't want to. Just a little bit?"

Still looking at the small round of the planet and its rings, the imagined image of the view from there still clear and fresh in his mind, the red echidna sighed. "A little maybe, yeah."

Tails moved to stand next to him. "Have you seen the moons?"

Knuckles narrowed his eyes. He could see the three planets, the rings, the few stars. "No."

"They'll look like stars, small dots of light? They're much much smaller than the planets and too far away to resolve into discs with this telescope. They stay dots. You should see three or four?"

"Ah. I see dots. How do I know if they're stars or moons?"

"They're moons," Tails said with certainty. "The planets are very bright, and it's a very small field of view. You couldn't see stars in there like this. Also, I know they're moons."

"So it's basically down to whether or not you believe Tails," Sonic quipped.

Knuckles made point to more properly study the moons. "Why wouldn't I? I don't think he's ever told me any nonsense."

"And I have?" Sonic didn't sound mad at all.

"All the time," Knuckles said seriously.

Sonic laughed but didn't argue.

The Guardian went back to concentrating on the planets and their rings and moons. He'd known before that they were planets, but it wasn't the same as seeing them here, little balls floating in the black of space, obviously round, with moons of their own, and strange rings surrounding them, with shadows falling on their surfaces. Not small dots of light, near indistinguishable from the vast amount of stars in the sky. These were worlds, like their world. Sure, not quite the same, and far away, but worlds still. Actual worlds circling the same sun as their world. If there was someone living there, and looking through a telescope of their own, Mobius would be such a tiny, slightly blurry round shape to their eyes.

He stepped back from the telescope feeling small and like something had been shifted sharply into perspective. He threw a glance up into the sky, to where the planets were back to being just star-like dots seeing them with his own eyes.

Neither Sonic nor Tails said anything to him as he took a few steps further away, wanting some space to think. They talked quietly among themselves and took turns at the telescope for a couple of minutes while Knuckles stared up into the sky, endless and unreachable above them.

Maybe it wasn't unfitting to start a new era with the reminder that you're rather insignificant in a cosmic perspective? He thought of some of the old philosophy writings he'd read over the past weeks, and wondered what those philosophers of old would have made of actually seeing those far way planets they used to track in the skies.

He was interrupted in his musings and watching the stars when Tails near smacked into him from the right, wrapping both arms around him in a crushing hug. "Happy new cycle, Knuckles. Thank you for having us."

Knuckles lifted one awkward hand to rest on Tails' back, staring down at the bangs that were tickling his nose. Tails was getting this all wrong. He was the one who should be grateful. He didn't invite them to have them over for the occasion. They invited themselves and probably saved this holiday from being all gloomy and dull. "Um.."

"Tails, let Knux breathe, will ya?" Sonic too had abandoned the telescope and even in the dim light Knuckles could see his grin.

Tails gave Knuckles a last squeeze and stepped back with an embarrassed giggle. "Sorry."

The red echidna shook his head. "No. Thank you, Tails." He waved an arm at Sonic in what hopefully came across as an inclusive, inviting gesture. "And Sonic. Really, I -... This meant a lot to me."

Sonic was right next to him and Tails the next time Knuckles blinked. He barely kept himself from jumping. You'd think he'd be used to how fast Sonic moved.

Instinct was to glare at the hedgehog and complain about being startled, but at this close distance, the starlight was enough to see the kind of smile that was on Sonic's face. "You're welcome," the blue hedgehog said, throwing one arm each left and right around Tails and Knuckles.

Knuckles let him.

Sonic's smile was still at full force, eyes shining in the starlight. "Really, we're glad we came."

Tails was nodding to confirm this statement, Knuckles was sure entirely for his benefit, because Sonic certainly didn't need reassurances. As if to prove him right, when the fox spoke up, it was with a soft voice and he was addressing Knuckles, not Sonic. "Are you still sad there are no other echidnas here today?"

The Guardian frowned. It was a serious question and he gave it a moment of thought before he answered. Unlike expected, he was spending these first hours of this new cycle not alone, but in the company of friends, of allies who'd fought his battles with him. He'd fought their battles, too, but it was not fighting together they came for but camaraderie and friendship, and the Guardian found he could not imagine being here with anyone else.

With Sonic, who'd brought back the Master Emerald when Knuckles had been unable to do so himself, after Knuckles had been nothing but an enemy to him and Tails. Sonic who came over to race him around the island on foot or on Gear, to spar with him, who teased and pushed his buttons and got on his nerves, but who'd be at his side if he'd need him to. Sometimes even if he didn't know it, or if he didn't want him there.

With Tails, who forgave Knuckles' past transgressions as easily as Sonic, who was learned and wise beyond his years in ways Knuckles would never know. Tails, full of courage and bravery veiled by his gentle soul and innocent curiosity.

Knuckles looked down at Tails, at Sonic, the hedgehog's arm still loosely around his shoulders, back to the bright glow of the Five in the sky, and thought if any of his people were still out there somewhere, they'd have to measure up to quite a standard. "No," he finally answered. "Not at all."

Tails beamed, teeth flashing white in the starlight, and Sonic tightened the hold around his shoulders for just a moment before letting him go.

Knuckles wondered if any further words of thanks would be expected of him, or in any way appropriate, but Tails silently gravitated back to his telescope and Sonic casually strolled a few feet away to stand with his head tilted back to watch the stars. After a moment Knuckles followed his example, allowing his eyes to trail from the bright light of the Five further up, along the glow of the Milky Way, and then aimlessly from star to star, to wherever his eyes wanted to go.

For several minutes it was quiet, then, predictably, it was Sonic who broke the silence. "You know, the sky looks epic up here, but, this is basically a new year. I think fireworks would be neat. We should have brought fireworks."

"We didn't know," Tails pointed out reasonably.

Sonic made a hmm sound. "Well, next time."

Knuckles snorted and looked back down to his friends just in time to catch Tails' expression at that statement. "Sonic, it's gonna be over 700 years until the next one. Only 300 more after that, though, so, we can catch two Alignments within 300 years if we live another thousand."

Sonic laughed. "We could build a time machine."

"By we you mean I." Tails wandered over to where Sonic was.

The hedgehog shrugged. "Well, yeah. I doubt we'll be much help. Still, a cool idea, right?"

"Travel to the future to stargaze?" Tails didn't sound like he really thought this was a bad idea.

"There are probably worse reasons," Knuckles agreed.

"Yeah, I guess," Tails admitted. "Like, I dunno, whatever reasons Eggman would travel to the future for."

"He'd probably bring enough explosives for fireworks, though," Sonic pointed out. "Eggy's stuff is always explosive."

Tails waved vaguely towards his telescope. "Well, I'm sorry I only brought harmless science."

Sonic threw an arm around the fox, pulling him firmly into his side. "We forgive you," he declared graciously.

Tails laughed. "Thank you. And really," he waved a hand towards the sky, "this is pretty festive as is."

Sonic hummed an agreement. "I didn't say it isn't. Just that fireworks would be cool. But, no fireworks. I get it." He tilted his head back anyway to look at the stars again, and Knuckles had a sudden idea that put a grin on his face none of the others saw because nobody was looking at him.

He waited until his friends had turned back to their sky watching, then he closed his eyes and reached out for the never truly dormant connection that tied Guardian and Master Emerald. He felt along it, let his mind sink just a fraction into the familiar energy, then he gave it the slightest pull.

As when he'd steered the Island around into position earlier, the energy came easily and calmly, responding to his own calm mood. In a fight, when there was danger and a rush of anger or fear would boil in his veins, control wasn't usually easy. The grip was, it was a permanent link. The trouble would always be control, because even the Master was Chaos in nature, and if Knuckles' mind was in for massive destruction of whatever was in his way, the Chaos would all too easily comply. The struggle would be to take not too much.

This was different. There was no danger, the Emerald was calm, he was calm. This was like steering the Island, or like the training he'd do frequently, for his control and keeping a good feel for using the energy for something specific.

The amount he'd pulled towards himself was tiny, probably less than would be contained in a Gold Ring, and it tingled giddily under his fingertips.

He kept it there for a second, testing his hold, then he opened his eyes and let go, opened his fist, throwing the fingertip-ful of energy up above their heads, giving it a last push of the mildest urgency.

It responded by pulsing up bright whitish green. Sonic and Tails started, staring up just in time to see the scattering sparks of Chaos rain down around them.

Knuckles closed his hand back into a fist, drawing back to his side and the light tingle returned to him just a moment after the glow faded from view.

Both of his friends were staring at him.

"What was that?" Tails looked puzzled.

This time it was Sonic who was a step ahead, who'd probably felt the shiver of nearby Chaos as it fell around them, but also the hedgehog's eyes were wide. "Okay, who are you, and what have you done to Knuckles."

Tails took to staring at Sonic now, and Knuckles felt a chuckle form in his throat. Sonic's words didn't even sound like a question.

Apparently the blue hedgehog thought he needed to elaborate anyway, flicking gazes between Tails and Knuckles. "The Knuckles I know isn't going to use his holy as heck shiny rock for making fireworks." He studied Knuckles. "Or have you been fooling us all this time, Knux? Huh? Are you playing around making pretty Chaos sparkles up here soon as nobody's looking?" Now that teasing tone and grin was something Knuckles was familiar with.

"Would I now?" He grinned back at the hedgehog, twisting the miniscule amount of energy in his grasp around before setting it back alight and making it twirl around Sonic in a spiral of green glow.

The hedgehog reached out for it, and Knuckles brought his hand down and closed his fist just in time to stop his friend from interrupting the tiny, fragile strand of energy.

Sonic glared at him as the glow vanished, folding his arms. "And he doesn't even share his toys," he complained in Tails' general direction.

"It's not a toy," Knuckles found himself saying automatically.

Sonic laughed. "No? Looks like playing to me."

Obviously Tails was on Sonic's side. "It does," he noticed. "But it's really awesome, too. And don't tell me you've never done it before. I've seen both of you try new Chaos stuff, and it doesn't look like that."

"It's normally done for training," Knuckles explained. "A lot of Chaos Control works on instinct, but instinct isn't accurate. It's the control part you need to train. Small exercises like this have been used by Guardians and Chaos Controllers already in the Old Times. The point is to take just a tiny amount of energy and manipulate that." He focused back on the tingle of Chaos under his skin and lightly pulled at it. Under his concentrated look, a small ball of green shaped above his open palm, glowing like a soft emerald fire.

"Cool! Can I do that?" Sonic poked at it, and Knuckles had to tighten his hold on the energy as some of it would have gravitated toward the hedgehog's pointing finger.

"Probably. It takes some patience to practice, though." The echidna grinned at his friend.

As expected, Sonic pulled a face. "We don't have time for that now." He tilted his head and grinned at Knuckles. "Come on, party, remember. I hear someone here can do nice sparkly fireworks to honour the occasion."

Knuckles grinned back, and threw his glowing ball up to soundlessly explode above their heads.

The End

Speedy's note: When I started writing this story, I was aware it was a super self-indulgent fic, and while I know a few others with similar taste in stories, I didn't expect it to gather a larger audience or click with many people. I was a little floored by how many of you seemed to genuinely like even the parts I thought wouldn't be for most people. So, it's been a real joy having all of you along for the ride!

Now, a bit on this story's background, for my fellow geeks. Feel free to ignore, but I wanted to give context for those interested. If you don't like history and science, please run for your life now, because I did Research and intend to share it.

The Echidna cultural elements (calendaric system, script, use of astronomy, etc) mentioned or described in this story are partly based on/inspired by ancient Mayan culture.

The connection between Mayas and Sonicverse Echidnas seems obvious if you look at elements from Sonic Adventure in particular (Tikal is named after a Mayan city, Lost World is the name given to another archeological site, the temple pyramids in Sonic Adventure largely resemble Classical Mayan temple architecture, etc). Environments in Sonic 3 and Knuckles have more of a general ancient ruins theme, but you can only show so much in 8-bit graphics. Sonic Team also visited Chichén Itzá when they worked on Sonic Adventure. There are photos of the developers at the ruins… as well as a picture with a Sonic and Knuckles plushy in front of a temple.

This story is however not in any way an accurate representation of what Mayan culture was like, nor was it intended to be. I'm not Mayan; I can't do representation. I took a good deal of assorted random knowledge I already had, things that can be learned from books and off Wikipedia and used them to inspire parts of what was to become the fictional echidna culture of this story. I stayed close to my source in some parts (the writing system for example), but I also freely invented a lot of things and changed others. It's just a story, after all, written for fun.

I was interested in finding out more about Mayan languages, there are actually a lot of them surviving today, but they're endangered minority languages. I couldn't find any comprehensive online dictionary or anything, so that was difficult, too. The bit of Spanish I know actually helped, but not much. The words now in the story ("Sky" and "Blue") are Yucatec Mayan, as taken from Wikipedia's Incubator list of articles written in it. If you want to look, language code is "yua"; link to the "sky" article: h- t- t- p- s : / / incubator. wikimedia wiki/ Wp/ yua/ Ka % 2 7 an (as usual, FFN hates links, so I hope it'll work if you remove all dashes and gaps). I thought it cool to see the language written in Latin script, so one can at least imagine what it'll sound like.

One thing I didn't change a lot is the astronomy. The Classic Maya practiced very accurate astronomy, perhaps unrivaled in accuracy at the time. The astronomically correct temples are a real thing. They observed all five planets visible to the naked eye as well as the moon and stars. Also the Maya Codices have a lot of mentions of astronomy. Recurring celestial events were considered connected to events in the living world and astronomy was used to predict for example upcoming eclipses, which were believed to be potentially dangerous times.

Unlike my Echidnas in this story, the Maya didn't have a calendar that included planetary alignments. I made that one up. The actual Maya has two different calendars in use, one for a period of 260 days (given the name "Tzolk'in" by Mayanists), and another that had the duration of a solar year ("Haab'"), when these two coincided (what happened about every 52 years), it was the completion of a Calendar Round, a reason for celebration and festivities, which in turn very loosely inspired the overall theme of the holiday in this fic.

For long term counting of times, the Maya used the Long Count Calendar, which counts the time continuously from a day zero. The 2012 Maya apocalypse hoax was caused by people misunderstanding the Long Count Calendar. On December 21st 2012 (Long Count date 13. 0. 0. 0. 0), the 13th b'ak'tun was completed; it was kind of a millennium, not the end of the world.

Rituals and traditions mentioned in this fic are of my own design. It is believed dancing and body painting were part of commonly practiced rituals though, and like many cultures, the Maya created artwork, murals and writing based on important and historical events.

The celestial event I used as basis for this fic is properly called a grouping of planets. As Tails points out in the beginning, two are called a conjunction and that's pretty common. More than two are called groupings, and are exceedingly rare the more planets you add. I couldn't find any info on if the Maya observed or cared about them, but other ancient societies did. The Chinese might have based the start of their calendar on such an event. For those few other nerds actually interested, here's a paper on ancient observations of groupings involving five planets: h - t - t - p : / / articles. adsabs. harvard. edu/full/1994JBAA..104..293D/0000293.000. html

I went with "anything more separated than ten degrees won't look stunning enough" and thus arrived at the "every few hundred to thousands of years" thing. (Compare page 295)

Researching Mayan culture and the beginnings of astronomy in various cultures was very fascinating and actually a lot of fun. Also writing this fic was a lot of fun. Hope you enjoyed it as well, unusual though it may be. Thank you all for reading. :-)