Original Flash Fiction: “Falling Stars”

Do you remember the time we got lost within the nebula? You sneezed cosmic dust for a week and the helium made our voices sound like aliens. I was worried, but you made me laugh and forget.

“Oh no, we’re doomed!” You kept saying in that ridiculous, high pitched voice until you laughed as hard as me and our sides ached as we zipped through the cloud. You’ve always had a knack for saying the wrong thing at the right time.

When we finally stopped laughing and I remembered that I couldn’t see anything beyond the dust and gas in front of us, you said, “A meteoroid is never lost, just hurling through the universe on its own trajectory.”

Remember that now. Don’t think about where we’re heading.

When we came to this system, the asteroids laughed at us, telling us to go back to the nursery, we were such tiny things. You told them that we had seen many minor planets on our journey and they were especially minor. I laughed at your bad joke because I’m a good friend.

That’s when we first felt the pull. The big ball of gas, that glorious bright star revealed itself over the far side of an icy moon.

“This is our trajectory,” you said. “This is our fate.” You wanted to meet that yellow star. No, you wanted to be that yellow star.

Getting pulled into orbit was easy, dodging the countless objects and debris was the hard part, but we did and that star got bigger and brighter. You went through a list of possible introductions, asking me which would be most appropriate when speaking to a star.

“Big fan of your work. You really hold this place together” was my favorite.

I thought it was a sure thing once we made it past the gas giants. We dodged that craterous moon just in time, but then there was the thing, not an asteroid or a minor object, no natural satellite. I’ve never seen anything so precisely angular, with its shiny and smooth surface, nor the many other things around this planet.

We’ve traveled far and the things we’ve seen were made of gas, rock, metal, shaped by impacts and fiery heat or burning cold. Nothing else looks so controlled and inorganic. When we hit the angular thing, our trajectory changed.

The view could be worse for two meteors plunging toward a planet. It’s all blue and white down there. The clouds look like fluffy things we could spend a full orbit lounging on and talking about stars, nothing like the nebula. And the water, maybe we’ll make it all the way and land in one of those great wet bodies.

You’re glowing, you know, just like a star.

 

 

 

*Featured photo by Ken Crawford