Fall from the sky
Lara was outside again. Watching the sky the way she always did when the world below felt too small or too busy. The night had a stillness she trusted. A calm she loved. Stars hung like distant fires, each one steady, unbothered. Then something moved, a light cutting across the black.
She caught her breath. A shooting star, she thought as she pushed herself up from the grass, dirt cold on her palms. Her lips parted, ready to whisper a wish but struggling to decide on which one. But the light didn’t fade. It grew. Bigger. Brighter.
The air seemed to hold its breath with her as the streak thickened and became a burning thing. Lara’s heartbeat started to match the low, growing roar. She never finished her wish.
The sky cracked open. A sound like the earth itself coughing tore through the fields, and the ground trembled beneath her feet.
Doors opened one by one. People spilled out into the street half-dressed in pyjamas, slippers dragging on wet concrete, robes clutched tight against the cold. Confusion spread faster than fear at first. Voices low, uncertain, pointing toward the horizon.
In the distance, something burned. An orange pulse against the black. Smoke rising where stars should’ve been. Then came the sirens, thin at first, then swelling, echoing through the hills.
Someone said meteor. Someone else said impact.
Lara stood in the middle of it all, barefoot in the grass, watching the fire bloom where the sky had fallen.
Lara couldn’t look away from the burning horizon. The sirens wailed somewhere distant, a warning meant for someone else. Every instinct told her to stay, to watch from the safety of her small, quiet patch of grass. But curiosity tugged harder. The sky had always been hers, her refuge, her religion and now a piece of it had come down to meet her. How could she ignore that?
She wrapped her arms around herself and started walking. The ground was still trembling in its bones, the night thick with the smell of smoke and ozone.
Street by street, the houses thinned, replaced by open fields lit faintly by the fire ahead.
She knew it was stupid but she went anyway.
