This month, she spent some evenings by the lake. For one week, she watched a comet—C/2023 A3, Comet Tsuchinshan-Atlas—a mere lump of rock and ice igniting in her sun’s heat as it passed through her solar system. The Earthling whispered her secrets to this comet, believing the light would carry them back to the Oort Cloud.

That comet—so brief, so fragile—flares, then fades, a match struck and forgotten.