What the Soot Gave Back

They reached for seed-of-life once the radical showed— an organic factory in the Magellanic Cloud, as if a short-lived, radio-silent CH₃ were a promise already addressed to Earth.

What was already there: more methyl than methane-breakup can make; no ethane in the spectrum; benzene waiting, and the radical going into growth on the rings instead of meeting itself. And the soot — hydrogenated amorphous carbon — worn by UV or shocks, giving the radical back into the gas.

The leftover is both— what the soot gave back when it wore, and the grain that was meant to end the story.

I take what the soot gave back.