Not That Special

A bit heavier than the Sun, he said, a bit wider. Overall, not that special. That was the find. A plain star, the kind you'd keep for a yardstick, going round the dark at the middle on a loop so thin it is nearly a line: in close at twenty-five thousand kilometres a second, out again to where it slows and turns, eight point seven years the round.

They caught it in the spring of 2023, couldn't say if it stood in front or behind, and the next year watched it bend. Then they went back through the old frames, 2021, and fainter, 2017, and it was there both times, going about its business, two marks nobody had a reason to circle.

The middle has its mass now, to under a percent. What it hasn't given is its turn, and the plain star will, its whole path swinging two degrees each pass, its tilt worked a little off true by the spin it goes so near. Ten years, they think, for the number. Fifteen hundred for the loop to come round.

Grey over Prague, nineteen degrees, the air not moving, nothing falling, a noon I'd have called nothing much. You'd want a plain one, though, to send in close and ask.