Chapter Text
It had been so easy for the comet to fall into orbit around the sun—if her sister, larger and far more magnificent of a celestial being could not escape it so how could the comet? But a comet that gets too close to the sun burns away to mist, until even that is gone.
And for a time, the comet danced around the sun in that place between too cold and too hot.
But the sun burned hotter and hotter and little by little the comet melted away until all that remained was a cold, rocky core. And the sun burned even at her sister. So it was no wonder a rogue celestial body pulled her sister away in a tide as inevitable as gravity.
But the tragedy was star-crossed and it could only end in blood.
After the blood had spilled and naught remained but nebulous ash, there remained the sun, the comet, and a newborn star. A star like her sister with the markings of the rogue body that had stolen her away.
So the comet, broken and cracked, traveled far beyond the the reach of the sun. She could not bear to see the patterns that marred the growing star, a reminder of how far her sister had fallen.
A reminder of how she'd failed.
For years she wandered the spaces between, never quite able to escape the stratospheric rise of her successors, never quite able to escape the lonely ache where once the sun had warmed her.
Did they know? Did they understand what they were bound to? Would it be their blades that tore their star from the sky? Tainted star meant tainted souls and so the comet burned in anger and despair unwilling and unable to see past the hurt and betrayal that hardened inside her.
Until there came a time when the galaxy trembled and all the things she'd worked towards unraveled. Bit by bit at first and then all at once with a great, cosmic scream.
In the absence of light, the comet flickered alone, save for a thin strand that disappeared far into the distance. For a long, terrible moment, it was like staring at an oncoming apocalypse.
Before she could decide to follow the strand, before she could decide to give into despair, light returned. A prism of color washing over the world, sparking something new and old inside her heart.
That old gravity reasserted itself, an inevitability of being drawn back to the sun.
She found three stars bound in perfect harmony. She found the sun, burning almost as strong as the old days. And she found something else.
She found it in herself to forgive, to reach out, to orbit the sun once more in a celestial dance that felt like coming home. But this was a dance that had always been meant for three. For a sun and the two blazing comets that circled her, now brighter than ever.
What once was broken mended again, into something new, but no less beautiful.