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The prompt for Kick-About #11 is TRAPPIST -1e.

Does it look enticing to you? TRAPPIST-1e is one of the most potentially habitable exoplanets discovered so far. Your descendants may be living there one day. It is similar to the size of Earth and closely orbits a dwarf star named TRAPPIST-1 which is not as hot or bright as our sun. One side of TRAPPIST-1e faces permanently towards its host star, so the other side is in perpetual darkness. But apparently the best real estate would be the sliver of space between the eternally light and the eternally dark sides – the terminator line where temperatures may even be a cosy 0 °C (32 °F).

The artist’s impression above reminds me of a polished marble kitchen bench, albeit one from which all of your plates and utensils would slip off. It looks cold. It makes me want to crawl back into bed, snuggle up and feel grateful. However, it is beautiful.

I started painting some plants for this new world, and I imagined that they would all be turning towards the dim light of their star. So I made a world where everything was evolved to point in one direction only, sucking up the warmth, the light, the energy; a single-minded yearning, shared by every living thing on the planet.

It made me ponder on humankind’s perpetual yearning, which leads us to disaster over long roads and short. If only we could all focus as readily on the majesty and wonder of the world that we already inhabit. There was nothing I could paint for this new world that could rival the natural wonders in the one we already have. I made the new inhabitants – refugees from Earth – look on in wonder. And then, because of their pose, looking upwards within the vivid setting, it put me in mind of a propaganda poster. which made me laugh.

Thanks again, Phil Gomm! This took me on a pleasurable journey this afternoon. I‘m posting this a bit early because I won’t have any more time to spend on it later in the week.