I was not always one.

Before the collisions, before the craters, before the long cold, I was many pieces of a world that no longer exists.

Gravity gathered us.

Stone pressed against stone. Broken surfaces settled together. Small fragments filled the spaces between larger ones.

We became a single traveller.

For six billion years, I mistook that arrangement for permanence.

I carried an enormous crater upon my oldest face. Beneath it lay pale mineral layers buried since the destruction of my parent world.

My other half carried different wounds.

Yet we turned together.

We crossed the dark together.

When the star that had warmed us grew old, expanded and surrendered its outer layers, we remained together.

Its remaining heart became a small white light.

I passed it once.

Then again.

Each encounter drew me closer.

On the last passage, something changed.

There was no impact.

No sudden blaze.

Nothing struck my surface.

Instead, gravity pulled more strongly upon the part of me nearest the star.

An ancient fracture opened.

Material that had rested undisturbed for billions of years faced empty space.

The gap widened.

I felt no pain. Stone has no nerves.

But the history written across my body was being divided.

A mountain-sized section began travelling away from the rest.

Loose boulders drifted between us.

Fragments followed paths that no longer quite matched my own.

For a little while, the smaller stones still resembled a bridge.

Then I understood that bridges require things to remain connected.

These stones were already free.

I watched the distance grow.

Across the darkness, a pale mineral seam appeared on both opposing surfaces.

The same ancient layer.

The same dead world.

A history continuing on either side of an empty space.

I wondered which half would carry my name.

The one with the oldest crater?

The one travelling closest to the star?

Perhaps neither.

Perhaps both.

The white dwarf diminished behind us.

Our paths diverged...