Merlin Through The Ages

You do your own stunts. I do try! Well, you want to show the people what you got?

Incredible illustrator @thelatestkate has never been afraid to talk about difficult topics; in the past, she’s shared her personal experiences with depression and leaving her religion, and her courage and candidness are always inspirational to us.

Today, she deals with another serious issue: how to cope if your parents are bullies. Bullying may seem like something that just happens in high school hallways, but it can happen at home, too—and if it’s happening to you, please know that the SparkLife community is always here for you, and that there are places you can turn to for help. 

A master post of Thomas Romain’s art tutorials.

There’s not enough space to post all of them, SO here’s links to everything he has posted (on twitter) so far : 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12. 

Now that new semesters have started, I thought people might need these. Enjoy your lessons!

The Mistress of Death’s name

It may have occurred in a second or in a lifetime, but now she was there, stuck in the darkness. It was not just the old black view that everybody could be used to. It was thick and sticky, and the kind of darkness that you could grab or hold in your hands in handfuls. The kind of dark that you could bite.

It was freeze and it was burning, and she can not breathe because there was not air, no oxygen, and her skin may well have been stretched and sew into the dark canvas around her but it was not for all that things that she felt as she was at the end.

Because then… then there were the Voices.

"Mistress…." It was said in nowhere and in everywhere.

"Mistress…" Another Voice calls.

"Mistress was so frolicsome...Lost, involved in herself...among of her belongings…" Another says, very close and more vocal than the others with a strange tone as scolding a child. And there was a pressure on her shoulders? It was increasing by moments. Something was touching her, maybe hands? "…But she comes to me at the end…The Mistress".

"Mistress..." Acknowledge the last one.

A cold fingertip caresses her cheekbone and later the hand slide to her hair, gently comb it.

"The Mistress…" They worship.

Despite all the strange situation, she was used to that, and despite she was choking, she only could think about the last few minutes when she still was standing in front of Voldemort. She wants to know. What happened with Riddle? Was he defeat? She had died, so this is the afterlife? Could she finally meet her family?

But her vocal chords did not cooperate, and her parents, Remus or Sirius are not here.

Just they.

"We have been waiting for you, Mistress…"

"Waiting for the flesh of the shadow".

"One of us are The Mistress…"

"And need the Mistress to be One".

There were giggles - or maybe she was hallucinating- and a cold softness touches her cheeks and then there was an ethereal pressure on her lips. She was being kissed, she realises when it ends. For some reason, she did not freak out. Possibly because now she can breathe and that was great. No more choking for her.

"Listen, Mistress".

"You was One of us…"

"…You are One of us…"

"…You will be One of us"

Suddenly the hands were around her, she could count three pairs including the ones grabbing her shoulders. And she realises, with a distant shock, that she has been very optimist when she earlier thought of them as normal hands because she feels that someone of them have too much more fingers than usual.

She honestly hopes that, at least, this were fingers.

They hold her and cradle her. And in the dark, with the knees under her chin, and without any confirmation, she knew that whoever these voices belong, they were bigger than her and less physical.

And out there, there was something else too. Something that if there was light, you could only call them clouds if you watch them through an optimist's lens.

But they have a presence. A potential for being. She could feel it and when she tries to look by the corner of the eye, they run away from her sight.

For some reason, her attention was suddenly oriented at the being at her right. He…she…it had been caressed her arm starting from her shoulder and ending at her fingertips. She was very aware of it when a long tube was pressed to her wrist.

And then there was a pain.

It was feeling like burning, exploding. Like a crucio curse focused into her bones. And for all the power and hate that Voldemort could have, there was not a comparison to this.

She felt herself cry, and maybe it could be a good moment for her voice to return, but she could not hear herself scream.

When it ends, years would be passed.

She sobbed. The Voices were repeating the chorus of "Mistress" with the same devotion, but she was sure that they didn't care too much about her suffering.

Some primordial instinct tells her, that they even did not understand that concept.

Another couple of hands reach to her forehead, and she knew what will come next. She would like to beg them but she couldn't.

It was not for lack of attempts.

Something hard and tiny was push in the middle of her forehead, where the lightning bolt is.

The tolerance to pain is increased by being exposed to grew pain levels, like build an immunity to a venom. Through the years she had got an over more than decent level, but when the second round was over, she was far distant to the conscience. She expected something which hurt her physically, not a reminiscent of a Dementor's attack.

She can not feel what was happening with her bones after this thing-tube, but now she can feel something extremely cold under the skin of her forehead, between the skull and the flesh.

Cold but with an ignite core, however, it was welcomed because the radiant cold was calming the pain.

She was so enjoying the absence of hurt that she takes a moment to notice that the entities had started moving again: three of them took a step back and she envies how could they do to move that easily in the solid dark.

She drew her attention to the pair of hands that appears front her face and considered again the idea of hallucination because a) she could see now that this they are skeleton hands and b) she was sure that they were the same exactly pairs of hands that also were on her shoulders, where they had not moved all this time.

The hands made a flourish move and something was reveal in the air like suffering a reverse apparition. Her pupils grew wide because she recognise it and when the hands drop it all around her and tied it under her chin, she knew that the texture would be like water.

It was her invisibility cloak. The one that the myth suggest it was given to the third Peverell brother by The Death.

She has a bad feeling and she would hate being right.

Something like a tube, something tiny and hard and her invisibility cloak. The situation does not look good for her.

How is this her life?

She was so deep in self-conscious thoughts that she missed when that the same three entities stop touching her and slide away from her. But she could not miss when all of their multiple hands stab her in her guts.

It was a dirty thing. She bleeds and screams, her voice now present and loud, and they rip things of her –even her left eye was torn apart- as the elusive clouds were brought in by force too with another couple of arms that never existed before.

And she could not think anymore as all around her explode.

Colin is that you

Golden.

We Just Identified More Than 200 New (Potential) Planets

The Kepler space telescope is our first mission capable of identifying Earth-size planets around other stars. On Monday, June 19, 2017, scientists from many countries gathered at our Ames Research Center to talk about the latest results from the spacecraft, which include the identification of more than 200 potential new worlds! Here’s what you need to know:

We found 219 new planet candidates.

All of these worlds were found in a patch of sky near the Cygnus constellation in our Milky Way galaxy. Between 2009 and 2013, Kepler searched more than 200,000 stars in the region for orbiting planets. The 219 new planet candidates are part of the more than 4,000 planet candidates and 2,300 confirmed planets Kepler has identified to date.

Ten of these worlds are like our own.

Out of the 219 new planet candidates, 10 are possibly rocky, terrestrial worlds and orbit their star in the habitable zone – the range of distances from a star where liquid water could pool on the surface of a rocky planet.

Small planets come in two sizes.

Kepler has opened up our eyes to the existence of many small worlds. It turns out a lot of these planets are either approximately 1.5 times the size of Earth or just smaller than Neptune. The cool names given to planets of these sizes? Super Earths and mini-Neptunes.

Some of the new planets could be habitable. 

Water is a key ingredient to life as we know it. Many of the new planet candidates are likely to have small rocky cores enveloped by a thick atmosphere of hydrogen and helium, and some are thought to be ocean worlds. That doesn’t necessarily mean the oceans of these planets are full of water, but we can dream, can’t we?

Other Earths are out there.

Kepler’s survey has made it possible for us to measure the number of Earth-size habitable zone planets in our galaxy. Determining how many planets like our own that exist is the big question we’ll explore next.

The hunt for new planets continues.

Kepler continues to search for planets in different regions of space. With the launch of our Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) and the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) in 2018, we’re going to search for planets nearest the sun and measure the composition of their atmospheres. In the mid-2020s, we have our sights on taking a picture of small planets like Earth with our Wide-Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST).

*All images of planets are artist illustrations.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com

so cute

#precioso

*gasps*