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Vega & Orin

2 · Log

The saga, in four parts

A radio astronomer and a satellite flight-dynamics engineer, a beach, two years at the far ends of a day, one balcony in Manila, and a dome on a mountain. Read it through and their stars join up.

  1. I · Zambales, 2019

    First light

    Years before the wedding, Vega and Orin as they were then, sitting on a dark beach beside a small telescope on a tripod, turned to each other mid-conversation, lit by a dim red headlamp on the sand, the sea calm and the sky full of stars.

    A friend’s birthday on a beach in Zambales, and somebody had brought a small telescope. Orin could not find Saturn. Vega, who listens to the sky for a living, could, and spent an hour showing him everything else.

    He worked out, later, that the beach had been perfectly placed: dark to the west, the sea flat, the horizon clean. He has been calculating where to stand ever since.

  2. II · Abroad and Manila, 2020–2022

    Signal delay

    Vega alone, late at night in a small radio-telescope control room far from home, in a parka with a mug in both hands, smiling at something off camera, a large white radio dish under the stars through the window behind her.

    A fellowship at a radio observatory took Vega to the far side of the world, thirteen hours behind Manila. For two years every message was timestamped and every reply arrived in the other’s night.

    Right now, thirteen hours apart

    Vega’s night, abroad12:00 AM
    Orin’s morning, Manila1:00 PM

    Orin, who models satellites for a living, built a small model of their two days: it told him when she would be awake. It was right more often than she was.

  3. III · Manila, 2023

    Rendezvous

    Vega and Orin on a small balcony high above a city at night, leaning on the rail side by side, a small telescope between them, a warm room with unopened moving boxes behind the glass door.

    She came home. One apartment, one balcony high over the city, and the small telescope from the beach between them. In Manila you can see perhaps a dozen stars. They named all of them.

  4. IV · Benguet, 2026

    Docking

    Under the dome at night, the room dark and empty, the shutter slit open to a band of stars: Orin on one knee holding an open ring box, Vega in front of him with both hands to her mouth, both in winter jackets.

    A weekend at Bantay-Bituin, the dome to themselves. Orin turned the projector off and opened the slit on the real sky. He had checked where Vega would be. Then he asked, and Vega said yes.

    So they are marrying where he asked: on the deck at dusk, under the dome by night, and out through the arch before Vega sets.