Memory vii: Meteor Cadence
It is the fate of comets to dazzle and destroy.
The prelude to even the grandest song is utter silence. In the vast gulfs where even the nearest light is but a small fraction of the panorama, the music of stars and spheres is a dim murmuring. In this black empty quietude, a player composes their next movement.
A comet flies through the void between the stars. She has no stellar light with which to dazzle, and no celestial body to destroy. The comet is alone: no one to shine for (as she melts to gaseous nothing) nor dance with (unto their obliteration).
But the comet does not drift through space: she flies like an arrow towards her mark. Among the uncountable multitudes, one star is growing ever larger.
Radiation sears against her black shell, internal heat mounting. She’s outgassing, her hair unfurling as mist behind her. This isn’t a mere physical process. She feels the will of the sun she nears, the cacophony of a billion patterns of lux, thoughts of countless radiant nascent minds just an incoherent babble washing over her. The sun has a will, and so does she, (it a gestalt, hers a refined unity). Will and purpose is written in the crystalline structure of ice frozen within her. This is enchantment. When purpose is cast with will, the world bends toward it: like this, the comet sings.
Then the song falters, as if a player missed a note. The crystalline structure, the lux within her, is isomorphic to a grand, infinite pattern unfurling. A fractal web, but a flawed fractal, this web hangs with tattered edges, threads torn apart and only partly sown back together. But the comet still sings, and her trail of sublimated vapor still conforms to the pattern of her imperfect will.
Her coma becomes twin wings unfurling behind her, and she rides the solar wind.
That great stellar mass pulls. Her path into the system is twirls and spirals, stealing momentum as she accelerates to her destination. That planet spins around the sun, a blue jewel deep in the innards of the system. It was terribly close, and terribly hot this near to an ever-screaming explosion of radiation. Why was this her destination? What comet would ever fly this close?
The question echoes in her mind. It is the fate of comets to dazzle, and their song could be heard many clusters away if you listened closely. She had heard seven comets dancing destruction upon a planet here (already deep past, by the time she had heard it) — but what brought them here?
And what brought her here?
It’s so hot so close to the star. But her last twirl around a planet spent momentum instead of stealing it, and she was on course to spiral toward the blue orb that had witnessed so many comets. It had lured in so many comets.
It had trapped so many comets.
It’s so hot. She feels the planetsong calling to her, pulling her in. A small white moon gyres around it, and why did its light look so ugly? She spirals in. She feels the thick brush of an atmosphere, and knows this is going burn. All her velocity will be friction, now
It’s so hot. It’s too much. Her song was still missing notes — her light had nearly gone dark, a mere billionth of a galactic spin ago, and that was hardly enough time to shine clearly again — but she didn’t have the luxury of convalescence.
She didn’t know what brought all those comets to this world. She didn’t know if she’d need to dance destruction with them. She wasn’t expecting it to be so hot. But it was worth it. She needed to do this. She didn’t float, she flew like an arrow towards her mark — because all of this was for—
For what? Why was she… it’s slipping her mind. She’s missing notes. (She remembers how ugly that moon looked, but even that’s slipping away, like it were a dream.)
It’s so hot. She’s burning up on entry. She’s losing mass. She’s losing her. Losing her mind. It was her fate to dazzle and be destroyed
A comet falls to earth.