It was a comet, flying through the sky in its highly elliptic orbit. As if flung by some catapult, it headed towards Earth, with some malign, yet divine purpose still unfulfilled.
Zoom in.
Celesto, a cat staring transfixed into a small tri-fold telescope, could see the comet's tail, swiftly receding, fading behind. It flared up, leaving a brilliant glare.
Zoom in again.
The comet itself was visible. Instead of being a ball of ice, like scientists had him believe, it was grey, swirling mysteriously with some unknown ether surrounding it. Intriguingly, this kept around it even though the comet appeared to have barely any gravity.
Focus.
Even with the semi-opaque gas covering the majority of it, he could see the surface. It was pimpled with holes, as if it had run into a field of micro-asteroids, with red ominously glaring from them. Any normal comet would probably not have survived such a barrage. Perhaps these holes were self-made. He could see it now, little dots scurrying across the planet, subservient ants working for a master.
The telescope was at its highest power, and he had to strain his eyes to see such a thing.
"In all honesty, they're just dots. Could be almost anything," he said to himself, squinting to scrutinize them.
They remained resolutely unfocused.
Were they just an optical illusion, or something more sinister?
He was still partially unsure.
Ambivalently, he looked at the comet again, to find that it was gone, its trail still marked in his vision. No object could travel that fast. At least, nothing without some form of rocket attached to it. Perhaps clouds had covered it.
Looking around, it was as though it had disappeared, draped in a veil of invisibility. Not letting his mind settle, he looked at the other areas of the skies.
The stars were beautiful. He could see the faintest ones, their light dim and far away, while the bright ones had distinct colors such as red or blue coloring their bodies, giving them a mystical tone. The nearby moon, splintered from its encounter with the space colony, had gravitated back together again, and shone down on the proceedings of here and the nearby city miles to the south.
However, he had to go. There were things that needed to be attended to, and he didn't know what was out here on this forest. The pines almost looked like a disjointed pair of eyes would suddenly appear. He wasn't too fond of the cliff in front of him, either, but it was a fear he had to live with.
He kept an eye on the pines, watching their venerable branches for any movement, and although his night vision was excellent, it was hard to see anything through the maze of branches.
Packing up the lenses and folding up the stand, while keeping a stray eye on the trees behind him, he felt awkward. Twenty years with this telescope had left him as cumbersome as ever. Mindful of the steep drop-off behind him, he got everything into his case and walked towards a split in the forest, which could almost be called a trail.
As he walked through the forest, moonlight shone on his fur, making it look even more speckled with dust than his grey coat suggested. His yellow eyes, however, glanced warily around, searching for creatures in the night. He wouldn't stand a chance against anything with claws.
He was practically tiptoeing the whole route through the meandering trail.
The trail started to thin out gradually, houses slowly appearing until he was in the depths of suburbia, where all was quiet. He wasn't really worried now. He could identify anything here, and he doubted anything serious would happen.
When he reached his house, in the residential area of Central City. It was homely, with a whitewashed front, looking bare, with two windows on either side. There was a gutter leaking down which he had never gotten around to fixing, and some other signs on unfinished renovations were all around the house. there was a bucket of paint, with the paint dripping over the side; sawdust was strewn across the floor; and the walls were covered with nothing but drywall. He don't care, not that much at all, he was just glad to do what he enjoyed.
It looked alright on the outside, but on the inside, it was a mess, with star charts strewn across the floor, and other niceties lying around unkempt. He negotiated his way through this clutter, and made his way to his bedside. The stars were not visible from the window; the tinted city lights obscured everything. Reflecting on the day, passing over how work was and troubles with the car, until he came to a standstill at the comet. It was rather odd, this almost dreamli– no, nightmarish comet. He got into bed, trying to not to disturb himself and jolt himself back into thinking about it, infecting his already saturated brain.