NEOWISE

Year: 2020

Reggie’s gaze ascended. With her mouth agape, her eyes did nothing but absorb the rare wonder. Unable to take her eyes off of the scene, she felt a delicate nuzzle of warm air trek around her legs.

The breeze caused the nearby strands of grass to frolic as if reminded that they too were perceived and worthwhile.

The summer humidity induced a litter of perspiration that stagnantly slid down Reggie’s brow as the sounds of late evening slithered out from the darkness in their ever-resilient quest to be heard.

“Can you see it?” asked an approaching voice.

Jodi’s tone was laced with anguish but her mask of encouragement, coupled with Reggie’s preoccupation, proved to be enough. The eight-year-old did not answer, as she was utterly transfixed.

Jodie migrated one step at a time; a method she often joked did not optimize productivity. Out from the sliding door and onto a concrete slab she proceeded, her eyes locked on her only living daughter. She folded her arms and exhaled her pain, allowing her exterior to harden as she swallowed her reality.

Jodi looked up to match her daughter’s trajectory. There, she too beheld the seemingly falling object.

“What’s the white part called? The part that looks biggest?”

“The nucleus,” answered Jodi as her daughter’s acknowledgement propelled her closer.

Jodi stepped off of the patio and onto the grass, the weight of her feet temporarily pushing down the finely threaded greens until her passing allowed them to bounce back up again, an unending routine that if nothing else provided expectation.

“And that’s a tail,” she remarked as she pointed towards the sky.

“Comets have tails?”

“They do. This one actually has two.”

“Are they alive?’ Reggie asked curiously.

“The tails?”

“The comets. Only living things have tails.”

“I think it’s more about the shape.”

“Oh. So, are they dead?”

Jodi took a deep breath and closed her eyes, determined to keep her façade secured.

“It’s not alive or dead. It’s an object.”

“What makes something alive?”

Jodie intuitively turned towards the house. Through the sliding door she beheld her cell phone on their glass table. It appeared at ease.

“That’s a bit complicated, honey. Things that are not alive are said to be inanimate. They have no signaling and self-sustaining processes.”

“What is it made out of?”

“Dust and ice.”

Reggie marveled at the concept, her imagination creating new tabs in an ever-evolving network of visionary webs.

“The first tail is blue. You can see it. Its twin tail is more golden.”

“And it’s very rare?”

Jodi slowly plunged herself down to her daughter’s level with the awareness that such an even playing field would make it harder to maintain her fortitude.

“Very rare,” she confirmed.

“Why?”

“Because we just discovered it and it won’t be back for a very long time.”

Jodi repositioned herself slightly behind Reggie as Comet NEOWISE soared brightly in the night sky.

“Is it going to land here?”

“No, honey, it’s just passing by.”

“Where does it live?”

“Well, ones like this that take a long time to orbit the sun, we think there is a place called the Oort Cloud on the outer edge of our solar system. That’s where we believe they live.”

“Why do they visit us?”

“Gravity pulls them out.”

“Do they mind being disturbed like that? Dragged against their will?”

Jodie’s pearly whites revealed themselves for the first time in days. An inarticulate puff of sound exuded from throat while her body quickly pulsed. Her child’s inquisitiveness tended to do that.

“I told you, they’re not alive. They’re just dust and ice.”

Reggie squinted in skepticism.

“You said it lived in a cloud.”

Jodie outstretched her arms and wrapped herself around her scrutinizing student. A quick kiss to Reggie’s arm manufactured a smacking reverberation that echoed into the traveling nocturnal vibrations of their world.

“Not like that. I meant it originates from a cloud.”

“Was it always there? Like it was born there?”

“Actually, it’s leftover from the formation of the solar system 4.6 billion years ago.”

“It’s that old!?” she bellowed in an inspired crescendo.

“Yes. It’s made from the same stuff we are.”

Reggie broke her gaze for the first time since setting her eyes upon the wondrous object. She looked at her mother in disbelief; her eyebrows retreating down to her lids while the corners of her lips twirled up in defiance.

As her face squished into an instinctive canvas of unity, her mother chuckled at the sight, an expression that proved to be, as of late, as rare as NEOWISE.

“It’s true.” Jodie assured. “Remember how I told you how our atoms can be traced back to burning stars and the big bang?”

“Yes.”

The same is true here. What we’re made of is inside that comet.”

Reggie’s head darted back to the rock she now felt personally connected to.

Jodie suddenly thought it best to let the potential scientist take in such amazement without distraction. She unclasped her arms and soared upwards.

She made her way towards the house, once again crushing the grass, until she landed on concrete.

“Is our sun about to die?”

The question sucker punched Jodie’s fortitude just as she thought she had triumphed.

She turned around and answered, “No. Why do you ask?”

“Last year you said the sun has a corona. Dad has corona. And I heard grandma say he’s dying.”

The mask cracked and shattered swifter than the speed of light; the barricaded emotions had been breached, and her attempt to protect her offspring from the severity of their situation proved fruitless.

Jodie launched herself towards her daughter with such acceleration that a passerby might have mistaken it for teleportation. She enclosed her hands around Reggie’s arms and turned her around. Realizing that her grip was vice-like, she quickly disbanded and stroked the now-reddened arms.

“That’s different. I was talking about a stellar corona. That’s the outermost layer of a star’s atmosphere. Daddy has a virus that they call the coronavirus.”

“And he’s in the hospital.”

“Correct.”

Reggie nodded in mature understanding. She looked back up at the comet.

“If we’re made up of the same stuff, are you sure that’s not alive?”

Jodie heard the question but somehow knew it to be rhetorical. As Jodie searched for the right thing to say, the repetitive jingle of her cell phone rang out like a pin drop in a silent room. Jodie instinctively darted towards the transmission, again trampling over the cultivated plants. This time, however, the sheathing leaves didn’t bounce back so quickly.

In that moment Reggie existed in something akin to the empty vacuum of space as no sound could pierce her absorption.

Jodie grabbed the phone, which had been vibrating in a tantrum, off the table and answered with a trembling tone.

Reggie peered at the diving celestial body as its dust and gases brilliantly streamed away from its nucleus. She defaulted to her mother’s explanations, as she was a scientist by trade, but still felt that something as purposeful as that journeying object named NEOWISE, that lived in a cloud, that endured, persisted, and visited from time to time, that had a tail and was one of the most alluring sights she had ever seen, as if it was signaling to the entire human race, whose ingredients formed from the same exploding star as she, should not be classified as completely inanimate.

Year: 8703

Ignii rolled out of his hardy hammock. He mashed his feet into the ground and stood. Mineral powder fell from him as he extended his arms in the evening’s glory. Ignii looked out of his modest cavern to see the sun had already set.

He battered his way outside to see his progeny, Sedimet, frolicking about the arid region.

“Up already, are we?”

Sedimet looked over and gleamed, “I am! You slept in again!”

“I’m millennia older than you! What do you expect?”

“You’re not too old to play!”

“I am indeed too old to play!”

Sedimet fractured in amusement and then oscillated to remove the fine debris of loose grains he accumulated from toying.

“Is it time?” asked Ignii.

“Tonight’s the night! Follow me!”

Ignii ambled after Sedimet, who bound and hurtled his way up a nearby elevation. The natural ascension rose steadily and steeply; its width ever shrinking, and Ignii soon lost sight of the spirited adolescent. There was no fear, however, as he knew precisely where he would be.

Sedimet was sitting enduringly at the summit by the time Ignii lethargically reached the highest point of the cliff.

“I’m here. What do you wish to show me?”

Sedimet said nothing; he simply pointed. His outstretched rugged arm jutted out and up and with a single jagged finger, he marked their object of interest.

Ignii followed the trajectory and escalated his gaze. There, in the night sky, he beheld a central mass surrounded by an envelope of dust and gas that formed two streaming tails.

The comet cantered across the heavens, taking its time, purportedly in no rush at all.

Ignii couldn’t help but grin at the traveling crag. Sedimet looked back to observe his guardian’s elation.

“Who is it?” asked Ignii.

“According to files, it is known as Comet NEOWISE.”

“NEOWISE,” repeated Ignii in a hushed affirmation.

“It’s one of the brighter ones.”

“It’s miraculous,” Ignii noted. “I’ve never heard of it.”

“It’s rare.”

“How rare?”

“The last time it passed Earth was the year 2020.”

Ignii disbelievingly looked down and repeated, “2020? That’s over six-thousand years ago.”

“Yes. When humans lived here.”

Ignii looked back up and confusedly calculated, “That means it won’t come back--“

“--For a very long time.”

“Did the humans all observe it?”

“We would assume. They had the ability.”

“Did they know?”

“That it would be the last time they would see it? Don’t know.”

Ignii beamed at his antecedent and became overwhelmed with empathy. A few pebbles disjoined from his exterior and found their way onto the granular ground. Sedimet heard the discharges but did not react, wishing to not further fluster his preserver.

“It encircles the solar system like a sentry without break,” Ignii remarked.

“Do you want to hear the most astounding part?” asked the junior.

“What could be more astounding than this display of delicacy and elegance?”

“NEOWISE is made from the same stuff we are.”

“It’s…a rock?”

“It is,” confirmed Sedimet.

“Dust and gas?” he asked mournfully.

“Correct. The tail is sodium.”

“Sodium. Fascinating. How were we so lucky to find such a habitable and handsome place to live?”

“Perhaps now is a good time to tell me.”

Ignii looked down at his curious scion.

“Perhaps it is.” Ignii focused on the stellar phenomenon and cleared his bouldered throat. “We once lived and thrived on a free-floating planet far away from this system. We called it Marmoreal. When I asked the elders how long we had been there, they told me ‘always.’ It wasn’t so unlike this wonderful wasteland really. Peace and prosperity reigned until The Great Weathering. You see, an asteroid crashed onto our small world and after surviving it, we did not realize the concealed terror it brought. Water. Marmoreal slowly developed rivers and streams. Then came the lakes and ultimately the oceans. As you know, our people do not worship the water. As we drifted farther away from a star, our world became colder and, after the asteroid, wetter. As you also know, our irregular and conglomerate bodies make us penetrable. The combination of these factors put our existence in grave danger. The water got in us. Our world froze. And we broke apart. Member by member, friend by friend: we crumbled. Shattered until there was nothing left but dust, rock, and broken ice. We few survivors knew we had to leave our home immediately and forever.”

Sedimet suddenly felt volatile, as if the veil of his innocence had just fragmented, chiseled down and eroded to the facts of his existence. He looked back to face the touring watcher as its ices in the nucleus were being, before his very eyes, heated and vaporized by the Sun.

“Do you think it hurts?” asked Sedimet with a degree of worry. “Is it in pain?”

Ignii only smiled.

Sedimet continued, “Are we…related?”

“You’d have to ask it,” Ignii replied.

A series of crunches clamored in the vicinity. Sedimet heard them immediately and began scanning the terrain.

In the canyon below, out of the innumerable blackened holes of the mountain range, emerged being after being. As if synchronized, they all made their way to the center of the valley, paused, and looked up.

Sedimet looked to Ignii but his glare remained undisturbed. Yet somehow, he knew his elder sensed the presence of their people. Sedimet, aware that he was the only member of his race that was inattentive to the matter at hand, joined in and focused his attention on NEOWISE.

It was in that moment that every onlooker acknowledged a deep recognition. The sands around them suddenly swirled in acclaim. The gallery of rocky grains applauded the level of connectivity that leapt out from the ground and into the galaxy itself.

Ignii felt it too: a testimonial to hardship, indebtedness to life in all of its forms. The gratefulness one is compelled to feel upon such unification, and the obligation to endure. He felt it all.

They all watched. They all understood. And when it was over, they all retreated back into their homes. Except Sedimet, who couldn’t yet make sense of all he had learned. Epiphanies rarely permit peace of mind.

Sedimet sat on the earth’s edge, on the precipice of maturation. He looked up at the emotionally vacant night sky wondering when such a happening would occur again. He sat up and, with his head down, walked towards his cavern. As he forlornly kicked his feet against the chalky plain, he promptly noticed something unfamiliar. He crouched down to see it protruding from the soil. It was covered in beige soot, a byproduct of being weathered, he deduced. Sedimet took a deep breath and blew on the curiosity. The jutting singularity revealed itself to have a green pigment.

Sedimet got as close as he could to study the strange strand that to him, seemed tail-like. He gently touched it with his finger, wiggling it back and worth as if to remind the out-of-place entity that it too was perceived and worthwhile. He lightly pushed it down.

Sedimet’s face lit up in utter awe as, after he let go, the organism ecstatically bounced back up, overjoyed to be found once more.

THE END

Bio: Gregory Cioffi (SAG-AFTRA, AEA) is a professional actor and a published writer. His works have been published in The Feral Press, Mystery Weekly Magazine, Queen Mob’s Tea House, The Nassau County Poet Laureate Society Review, Little Old Lady (LOL) Comedy, Blood Moon Rising Magazine, Fleas on the Dog, The Five-Two, Aphelion, Paumanok: Interwoven/Transition, and Allegory Ridge. Many of his stories have been archived in numerous libraries including Yale University’s Beinecke Collection (Rare Books and Manuscript Library). His poem Confined But Commemorating, written about Memorial Day during the pandemic, won third place in the Nassau County Poet Laureate Society Poetry Contest. Greg is an Adjunct Professor of English at Long Island University, an Associate Professor of Literature & Composition at Post University, and he also teaches Creative Writing, Poetry, and Basic Acting at Nassau Community College.

E-mail: Gregory Cioffi

Website: Gregory Cioffi's Website

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