Secrets of the Oort Cloud

Months have passed since I’ve seen the Earthling out at night. During the long days of summer, she hid away in her cottage, the heat pressing on her skin like a weight, threatening to make her combust. Inside, her inner fire remains a quiet smolder, one she can’t put out.

Each night, as I pass her window, I see the Earthling’s face glow in the light of her computer screen. She’s told me she’s writing about me—how I was born, how I’m growing, my peculiar spectra, and how, one day, I’ll die. I tell her how it feels to be out here alone, creating my own light.

Now that her nights are crisp and long, she steps outside at last, her hazel eyes capturing photons I sent out to her millions of years ago. In the cool air, she lets her fire flare, an embrace of restlessness, an acceptance of longing to be more than the sum of her days. This is where we meet, when both of us can burn together without fear of being consumed. Here we study each other: me through her camera lens, her through my photons that she keeps with her always.

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.

But the Earthling, she burns steady—from within, like me. Someday I’ll die out, but for now, in this brief moment, I’m the true keeper of her stories, her wishes, her secrets. I hold them for her, asking nothing in return.

C/2024 A3 Tsuchinshan Atlas 

GT 81 APO 

ZWO ASI260MC Pro camera.