Original Short Stories

I was a Star

    A long time ago in the Milky Way there was a meteor revolving mindlessly about the galaxy. The meteor hit the asteroid belt and started racing towards a big blue and green ball. It hit the green planet's atmosphere and the meteorites streaked across the sky. The meteorite split the ground in ripples like a pebble skipping across water and broke into sediments, scattered across the blistering, lush dirt. This is when I, Sammy Laraine Jr., was born.

I laid against the mud and looked at the sky. I had never seen it from this angle, I had actually never seen it from any angle. The sea of stars glistened as fire continued to burn in rays across the black night sky. The moon was beautiful form here, shining like a beacon for all others see. Soon enough, the stars exited to the right with the big ball of flame pushing them out of existence. Millions of years passed and all I would do all day and night for centuries was make pictures out of all the stars and clouds, and watch the birds as they beat their wings across the sky. If I were a bird I would fly everywhere, I would want to see the rest of this barren planet. I would be free instead of a prisoner in this small, smooth body.

All I wanted was to be free and yet I was tossed further into torture as grains of brown were tossed upon my by the fierce wind. In the million years I had been here I had always been on the surface with the stars to keep me company, but now I laid beneath layers and layers of compacted dirt and rocks suspecting the worst. I keep sinking. Other sediments began  cementing to me like barnacles on a whale.

I could not tell the days and nights apart anymore as I slipped through the quick sandish ground. I began getting claustrophobic of myself. The pressure was getting too severe to bare. I felt as if I were in between two magnets, and as they came closer and closer, I got pushed down. Down. Down. I seemed gloopy, though I was solid and I had stripes pasted onto me. I was a bird, a Hoopoe! I had a striped tail and a dark neck. Maybe this is not so bad after all. I tried to swim upward to the surface so I could fly. I did not work, I kept sinking.  I could not fly therefore I was not a bird. I was just a metamorphic rock.

It started to get warm, no hot. Boiling. Blistering. Sizzling. Sweltering...I was magma. I was a liquid. I could move! More magma started to flow into me. We became one. I was slick and huge and I was powerful. I began to boil more than usual. As I began to grow I wondered if I was going to be shoved farther under the surface. I started moving down. No...up! I was going up! I was going up fast. I was exploding! I was blinded as I felt the air cold upon my erupting body. I was gushing down the volcano and heard screeches. There were pink, tan, and brown, two legged animals galloping away from me. They were hopping into colorful metal boxes. The boxes started rolling away. I wanted to follow them, but I could not. My path had me leaping off cliffs, setting everything on fire as I went.

I saw a deep blue body. I poured into it. The matter steamed when I hit the liquid. I started hardening and broke off from the rest of myself as hit the wet sand. I began to solidify. I was an extrusive igneous rock. I looked around the coral reef and there were beautiful fish swimming about me. I could watch this forever. I may just be a small gray rock with many holes, but this view made me feel a little less empty. It was even better than the stars. During the day colorful fish would play around me and crabs would walk over me. Every once in awhile I would see big feet poking through the water.

I started to wither away. My holes were nonexistent and I became a very small pebble. Large fingers reached toward me and picked me up. I came out of the water and was thrown backward into a bed of rocks. They were huge!. I looked up at the sky and there were birds! I watched as they swooped down to me and I anxiously awaited the day they would come and take me away. A gull came down toward me and scooped me up. Upon realizing I was not as tasty as he had wished he spat me out. I landed in a bed of fresh, green grass. A machine, I am later informed is called a lawn mower, came and gobbled me up. I went through its entire body and shot out the other end. I hit a large furry thing and fell back into the grass.

"Ow!" said the furry thing. He had big fingers like the thing that threw me out of the ocean. He picked me up, examined me, and grunted. Then tossed me into a pit with other pebbles. He continued mowing and I watched him until he disappeared from my sight. The day turned to night and back to day again. A bell rang and tons of children came running at me. They jumped into the pebble pit and a young girl came and sat on the ground next to me. She sighed and looked at all the pebbles next to me.

She started picking up the rocks next to her, shaking her head, then throwing them back. She continued to do this for quite some time, then she looked right at me and smiled. She reached out and picked me up. She pulled a marker out of her coat pocket, uncapped it, and pressed it on me. She drew two dots and a curved line, she capped the marker and shoved it back into her pocket. She grinned, hugged me to her chest, and said, "I'm going to call you Sammy Laraine Jr., my other rock Sammy Laraine died so you get to be Jr. My name is Katie and we are going to be best friends forever." Then Katie put me in her pocket along with the marker.

Katie kept true to her promise. She helped me become a bird, and became my wings. When she got older I stayed the same. She would re-apply my smiling face when it faded away. Katie started hanging out with a man named Thomas, I really liked him. She told me that this was the man she was going to marry. Thomas took me to the ring shop and made me the rock on her wedding band so I would truly be with her forever. She laid me on her nightstand every night and put me back on her finger every morning. Katie's face started filling with wrinkles and she became forgetful and slow. Some days she would forget her name. Some days it was mine. Thomas became agitated when Katie refused to eat or drink anything. I wanted to help, but I could not do a thing but watch as she slowly took her last breath.

At her funeral, Thomas broke me off the band and laid me on her grave. Every once in a while Thomas would visit me, but all he would do was cry. A few months later there was another funeral held in the spot next to Katie's. Thomas stopped visiting, I wish I knew why. I glared at the sky all day and all night until the dirt devoured me and sucked me downward. I did not put up a fight and when other sediments started to stick to me and I tried to forget about Katie and Thomas. I kept going down and down and down. I was a large sedimentary rock now. A breccia again. Lots of shells, sand, dirt, and other rocks cemented to me. I prepared myself for the next million years when I should travel through the rock cycle. Maybe I will forget about Katie. But then again I was once a star, and I could never forget that.