Insignificance

• Emma Hollis, Grade 12, The Canberra College - Woden Campus
• Short Story
• 2014

Excellence Award in the 'The Text Generation 2014' competition

I was born of a billion motes of dust colliding by chance in nothingness. I swelled, compressed, drew everything around me into my breast. I crushed my heart into a pulsing tide of lava. I am hard inside, layered, but my outside is beautiful and strong and bathed in light. I am made of so many things, balanced perfectly to make me possible. Warmth brushes my surface, from far away, but it is a warm draft compared to my hot, slow insides.
I turn eternally in my immortal sky, watching the tiny lights blink and go out. They shine so beautifully before they go. I admire the lights as they admire me, though we are so, so far apart. I am lonely. But my gleaming face does not go unnoticed – one day a small white admirer grows by my side. He is cold inside, and his face is pale and pocked, but I am grateful for his company. He circles me endlessly, sighing at my beauty.
My heart is slow, smouldering, but my face flutters and moves. Hard and soft collide, plates move, rock thrusts out, my blood bubbles. I watch as things grow outward, stretching away from my burning heart. They are so small, mere freckles on the surface of my immensity.
In a single flicker, I feel a pricking on my surface – my metals become cities, iron pierces my skin, I feel the weight of six billion pairs of feet.
And then they are gone.