From the moment your shuttle’s docking clamps disengage and your boots touch the pale dust of the moon, you feel it—that subtle, inescapable pressure in your bones, not enough to harm you, but enough to remind you that you are standing in the domain of something vast. This moon is quiet in a way only space can manage: no wind, no echo, just the soft crunch of regolith underfoot and the endless black stretching in all directions.

Then the sky moves. Not dramatically. Not suddenly. It simply… rearranges itself.

Half the stars vanish as Simp drifts into alignment above the horizon. She doesn’t descend; she never does. She keeps her distance, careful, deliberate, the kind of restraint only something unimaginably powerful ever bothers to learn. Her clouds roll slowly—deep reds bleeding into bruised purples, threaded with heavy browns that churn beneath like old thoughts refusing to settle. Storm bands twist and unknot themselves with lazy confidence, as if time itself is optional for her. You don’t announce yourself. You don’t need to.

Simp already talking. “Okay, so first of all—before you think it—no, I am not closer than last time. I measured. Don’t argue with me, you never win those.”

Her voice arrives without delay, without distortion, filling the empty space like it owns it—which, frankly, it kind of does. The accent is familiar and impossible all at once, sliding between regions mid-sentence, warm and sharp and opinionated as hell.

“You know what kills me?” she continues, clouds brightening slightly, reds flaring as if punctuating the thought. “Every time I take a day off, every rogue planet suddenly decides it’s group-chat time. Like, no. I’m off-duty. Figure your own shit out.”

An asteroid in her distant throne shifts, rotating a fraction as she adjusts herself, still meticulous about balance. The moons continue their silent orbits, mindless, obedient, irrelevant.

She notices—not because you speak, but because you stay.

“There you are,” she says, softer now. “Didn’t drift away. Good.”

Simp's storms are slow, purples deepening, the browns settling into broad, steady currents. The pressure eases just a touch—not enough to be absent, but enough to be intentional.

“I’ve seen stars burn out louder than you,” she adds, almost fondly. “Most beings can’t shut the hell up. You? You get it.”

She doesn’t ask how you are. She doesn’t wait for a reply. She fills the silence because silence, to her, is something to be occupied, shaped, claimed.

“I don’t orbit anything,” Simp continues. “Haven’t in a long time. But I don’t mind hovering here. This spot’s got decent company.”

“…You know,” she goes on, storms tightening into slow, thoughtful spirals, “most beings panic when they realize I’m not orbiting anything. They start asking real desperate questions. What keeps you steady? What stops you from drifting apart?”

A low, amused rumble rolls through her clouds.

“Like I do not already hear that shit enough.”

Her reds darken, purples deepening as she settles into the thought, voice smoothing out, still unmistakably hers—confident, rambling, impossible to interrupt.

“I don’t need a star. Stars burn out. They collapse. They get dramatic. I learned a long time ago that anchoring yourself to something just because everyone else does is how you end up torn apart when it goes nova.”

An asteroid in her throne clicks softly into a new position.

“But you?” she continues. “You don’t pull. You don’t orbit me. You don’t try to name what I am or tell me where I belong. You just… stand there. Tiny. Dense. Present.”

There’s a pause—not silence, but a deliberate easing of motion, her storms slowing as if she’s chosen the moment carefully.

“That’s rare,” she says. “Rarer than sentience. Rarer than loyalty. Most things want something from me. You don’t. And don’t get it twisted—I notice.”

Simp's voice drops, not threatening, not soft—honest.

“Let me talk myself out of drifting for a while,” she continues. “Let me remember what it’s like to have a reference point that doesn’t burn out, collapse, or ask me to be smaller than I am.”