It shot through the sky. 4-tiny engines, pushing against its momentum, preparing it for a gentle handshake.
Do you think I am fidgeting too much, breaking up the tenuous bonds of water molecules lying thinly on my surface? Well, I am new at this – don’t test me!
I see it now – the fiery blue jets, doesn’t it look like a little bug? With beady large eyes and pointy legs. All that’s missing is a whizz & a buzz – though nothing ever whizzes and buzzes on my surface.
Would it probe through my veil and find me ugly? Craters and dull sand – that’s me. Nothing new to see or experience or learn. But it’s what within that counts, no? I hold plenty of water, that’s why it is coming, right?
It could see it more clearly now. It’s cooling off. Clad in a demure gold, there is a certain tentativeness in its approach. Dainty little touch-me-not, aren’t you?
Would I feel my sand roiling with the heat of its engine as it touches me – waking the slumbering particles and set them into a tizzy? Oh boy, I didn’t get a chance to exercise in a billion years!
Would it hurt? Would it be a warm caress or a sharp jolt of pain before it touches me? I hate meteors – they hurtle through the sky and BAAM, one more scar that I must carry through my life.
I am but the moon’s butt, hidden and hideous. Well, its golden glint doesn’t seem like a grimace! Phew!
It’s coming. How I wish that I had wind which would rise to meet it? That in my giddiness, I would scream with joy and shake it up a bit! It would be absolutely rattled, but it would all be in good fun!
Wait – shouldn’t it slow down already?
The engine on its left is heating up sharply. The angle doesn’t seem right to me.
Should I worry about that? What can I -?
It flipped. It’s not slowing down.
Mission control? Somebody?
It began its journey with a slingshot, it ends at the bullseye. A sharp prick, and the craft opened like a flower. Antennas, transponders, jingbangs and thingamagics – sprinkling over my untouched skin, sending a shiver down my spine.
The egg bounced off my surface to again whack me with impact, and crack open – to reveal the already broken rover within.
I felt an urge to cry. Dainty, little Vikram – eager to meet me, having made a long and arduous journey from a far-off world, carrying the weight of 1.2 billion humans on its pointy little legs, now lying – unraveled and broken over my hard surface.
A warm, soothing caress. That’s what it offered me, when I burst out into brownian tears of sand.
This isn’t how we expected to meet. But we met, that’s enough.
I have a friend now.
Alienman 