The comet vanished from the sky one night.
It happened all too quickly. One grey morning, the light wasn't there anymore.
No one could understand what took it away. Before that moment, nobody had even considered that it was possible for it to leave. The light was there — it'd always been there, sparkling brightly above them, never having wavered nor dimmed. And then it was gone. There were no words left in its wake; only some stardust, and an absence.
A teacher mourns the son she took under her wing. A student in a perky red hat bursts into tears at the taste of birthday cake. A little prince never finds out.
The boy with the ticking watch around his neck curses himself, the world, anyone that he believes could've prevented this; and he forever buries himself in study, a hopeless struggle to find reason. The girl with the ribbon goes blank.
The constellations glimmer differently now. Cold air whispers something quiet over the fields; crystal fragments of ice, left behind in the breeze. One might still be able to hear it if they listen closely — one might think they saw a flash of silver around the corner, a twirl in the corner of their eye. Their cupped palms overflow with a rainbow of sugar stars, only to look down and find them empty. Where there should be a voice, nothing is heard. To even speak the soul's name leaves a sickly sweet taste in the back of the throat, one that chokes and silences.
No one ever really leaves, Amitie, he once said with a perennial smile. If somebody leaves a mark on your life, even just a little, then you'll remember them forever, won't you?
He told her that before opening his hand and offering her a piece of strawberry candy.
Maybe the comet was doomed from the start. Something that existed to briefly pass through others' lives, and then to depart before anyone realized it was there at all. A funny little tragedy. An ephemeral angel.
The cosmos shifts and moves. The teacher will keep a silver wand by her heart. The student will learn to bake, and the prince shall continue to live a life of freedom. The boy will follow in the footsteps of his mentor, and the girl will grow up to accept that there is no such thing as destiny.
It's in everything now. A burst of magic spread into the stars that night and rained down from the atmosphere. It became presence and love inescapable, having become infinite by virtue of its finitude. A ubiquitous embrace that never lets go.
The light is still there, somewhere out of sight. Nothing has changed — all is well.
It will come back around in another million years.