The Birth of a Starbug

The starbug egg had floated through galaxies for millennia, waiting for the right planet to catch it in a strong enough gravitational pull to bring the celestial larva down to its surface. The planet — unknown, uninhabited, and unnamed — hadn’t ever known life throughout the entirety of its existence, which is quite a long time, even by starbug standards. It was a match made in heaven.

The space egg’s trajectory wavered as it felt the gravitational pull of the colossal planet effortlessly pulling at it from millions of miles away. What had always been a straight path through the endless reaches of space started to curve — slowly at first, and then more forcefully — until the egg found itself heating up in the planet’s atmosphere as it hastily hurtled towards the sandy, red surface.

The impact was monumental, sending shockwaves through the planet. Waves of sand crashed like tsunamis, abruptly disturbing the peaceful harmony the planet had only ever felt. Earthquakes radially rang out in every direction, with aftershocks echoing like explosions with each concussive shockwave. In the middle of a black crater of superheated glass, a single crack appeared on the starbug egg.

A single crack was all the starbug inside needed to start chipping away at its otherwise-indestructible shell. The shell had withstood collisions with meteors, meteorites, and even lightning-fast comets hurtling through space, yet now found its integrity gone, its aegis eroded.

Through the ashes of complete cataclysmic circumstance, a baby starbug eventually crept out of the shell it had forever called home, surveying the planet that it would eventually consume.

If the planet could have wept, it would have.