Indomitable

I stood upon the balcony of the world, nestled in the highest peak of the highest mountains, my gaze turned skyward. Surrounding me on the balcony were others, their eyes locked in an upward stare as were my own. I did not recognize any of them but on the other hand, I was too focused on the sight unfolding in the night sky before me to bother. As far as ignorance to my surroundings, I don't even know what world I was standing on. The sky was dominated by whatever titanic planetary body the smaller world orbited. So large, or perhaps so close, was the larger planet that coastal formations, weather patterns, even rivers and deltas were clearly visible on the surface beyond that on which I stood. From the void of space to my left, another spherical formation began to slowly become larger and somehow more menacing. We, myself and my unknown companions upon the balcony, stood silently watching as the distance between the two discs in the sky before us became smaller and smaller as the second formation closed in on the planet around which we were locked in orbit. I don't know how long it took, only that each breath taken in by those of us standing on that balcony was savored, bittersweet, with the realization and acceptance that it was one breath closer to the last we would take and that that last breath would be sometime that night standing atop a world that felt no more alien to me than my own home.

After time had stretched into countless eternities while we watched the closing of the gap between the ill-fated discs, it finally happened. The surface of the intruder kissed that of the massive world holding us within apocalyptic proximity. The initial shock of the impact could be seen on both spheres, massive cracks racing outward in the surface materials, splitting and expanding into smaller and more numerous canyons as they traced their way around the two forms, accompanied by a growing ring of atmospheric pressure close in pursuit. Momentum from the impact took only a brief moment to transfer completely, rocking the larger body from its place in the vacuum of space and imparting a recoil effect into the mass of the smaller attacker. From the impact point, violently shaken free from gravity's hold, huge chunks of rock and earth were ejected outward into the surrounding emptiness in a fairly uniform expanding ring. The world we stood upon lay directly in the path of the growing ring of planetary collision debris and it took only a few minutes for the momentum of the nearest traveling fragments to push the pieces into a distance at which they were trapped in a descent assisted by the gravitational forces emanating from the world below us.

We watched in continued silence while planetary fragments from both worlds closed the distance to our atmosphere and began to glow red with the friction from breaching its boundaries. The largest pieces would not impact directly on top of us. Smaller shards of rock began raining from the sky around us as the nearest truly significant mass of collision ejected debris came crushing down near enough that before the world was shaken apart, the resounding thump and accompanying thunderous crack was the last thing we heard.