Night blanketed the region. The sky was completely devoid of stars and blacks and violets - lights from the bustling city and now quiet suburbs bleached them in a orangey-pink. A few cars passed on their way to either point A or point B. The hour passed for pedestrians and landed on delivery hour. Those that were nocturnal scurried about in the trash cans or readying to return to their dwelling. A freeway separated the wild nature from the built nature. This particular freeway had a gas station waiting to be refueled.
“What a beautiful night out. It truly is spectacular to walk home when they haven’t changed the bulbs in the street lights yet,” he said while staring into the abyss of the sky. “To think that you don’t just look upon a flat canvas and see a bunch of sparkly, white Christmas lights. But that we’re just a simple fish tank submerged inside an apartment beneath the ocean. Heh, more than that - amidst all this,” he sighed. “He stopped and said it was beautiful only when he created you,” he turned and bit the bitter coldness that was loneliness. A breeze began and he adjusted the hood on his jacket to better protect his ears and neck.
The trucker finished his cold,stale coffee with still a bit to go, then refuel the station, then go to the fill up point, and then finally rest at the first checkpoint. The road block farther up state put him several hours behind schedule - hours he had to make up for by sacrificing sleep. He’d done it before and knew he could do it, but something about winter on the road just always seemed to entice sleep faster. He edged for a bit more gas to avoid a disaster like that.
He took a deep breath to exhale the extra sting of the cold now that he came to the fact he had been day dreaming again. Hands in his pockets, he kept moving forward, home was only a bit a way and although he enjoyed staring into the night - swore to never enjoy it until he found, again, the one person who made it immaculately enjoyable. Then he began to dwell on how tired this insomniac expedition had made him and how he couldn’t wait to snuggle into his always warm comforter.
In the vast expanse of blackness, a single blue speck lay in the perfect path a phenomenal event. Set in play centuries back before there were gas stations that needed refeuling and street lights to veil the sky, a fragment of an asteroid escaped a perilous journey towards a distant star. Over the years it collided with other space debris and changed course quite a bit, but it’s current trajectory was a clear shot through part of a hemisphere of a lonely blue planet. Stars pleading with this blue planet to look upon them once more, cheered on this fragment in hopes that it might stir in the hearts of the planet’s inhabitants. A long marathon it had, but in a bit, it will have crossed its finish line.
By this point, a political gesture to cut unnecessary expenses, closed the sole agency charged to look upon the forgotten void and inform the media of astral shows. The documentation of the fragment approaching the atmosphere never finalized before the final signature and military satellites will simply turn their backs as it poses no threat. Some scientists will be sipping coffee or tea looking through telescopes, others sleeping, and others dreaming.
This is unusually busy for an intersection at this hour. He thought waiting for a gap in the cars or technology to recommend when a safe time to cross would be. Unusually un-irritated, he merely sighed once more and just stood and stared into the sky at a particularly different flickering star in the sky. A doze was quickly approaching him and he began to day dream - or rather day-mare about once happy times.
Completely irritated that he had managed to keep her up this long since her dream about him, she donned some layers and ventured outside. Choosing a rather comfortable spot on the lawn, she plopped down and laid her hands beneath her head and stared - attempting to connect the dots and find shapes in the clouds.
Feeling a feeling quite similar to having one’s insides solidified and then removed without any prior incisions, he clenched his fists and tried to focus on pretending he was a dragon as his breaths visibly escaped him. It was weird because whenever this happened he felt her feelings, but dismissed them as insanity. He usually came to quite a sensible argument and proceeded with his day, but this night. And on this particular night, he saw a shooting star. For mere child’s play he wished to pass a message along that she wouldn’t throw away or burn. And then he saw another and a little bit after that, another.
The driver, now having found a station that played anti-sleep music, merged onto the off ramp and slurrily signaled that he was approaching his destination. With his heater out, sleep was slowly drowning him.
She was just about to drift off when a rather large cloud moved away from by her feet and revealed a spectacular show of colour. She wormed her way a feet back and propped herself against a a shadow to watch the sky’s play.
He soon realized this was no ordinary meteor shower as different rocks began to burn different colours in their path. Finding a rather clean area of sidewalk to lounge upon and gaze, he sat - then lounged.
The fragment was greeted by earth’s space debris. In celebration, they fell to close to the gravity well and lined the approach of the little survivor. Different debris were made or tainted with different metals and salts. Their colours ranged from bright reds to pure whites to vibrant greens and purples. A path was cleared en route of the soaring space rock.
They quite much enjoyed the astral show and waited to see if there would be a couple of stragglers. Then they realized an oddly flickering star in the middle of where the show was was getting bigger and brighter. They were struck with awe as beating, pure white light splashed into the atmosphere in a ripple of gas exchange. Immediately it changed colours to a rather beautiful blue and earth green for being lights of scorching rock. It left a fizzing trail of spiraling fragments and space dust in white.
The driver turned onto a now quiet road preparing for the next intersection to perform his U-turn. Distracted by a radio call and a wobbling tire, he came to the intersection.
He rolled with the fragment wishing it could have landed by him. Unaware of the semi truck that was coming around the corner by the daze of what he just saw, he remained in the confines of the bike lane. Eyes closed, he wished he could’ve shared the sight with her. Now rather annoyed by his senses alerting him to the noise of industry, he remembered where the roll took him and tried to assess from where the tuck was coming from. He looked up and was instantly blinded.
The driver had approached the intersection too fast.
She was still locked in eye contact with the hurling space rock coming toward her. She didn’t feel a rushed urgency to move, just stare. And even though, she had a boyfriend, her deepest thoughts wished a science nerd from her past could’ve been there - this time anger didn’t well up at the thought of him. This time a rock cratered where she had lain at this beginning. It’s shape vaguely resembled a perfect heart. Free of blemish, ready to be sanded into a shiny blue-green krystaline. She waited for it cool and went back inside to turn on her computer.
