Drabble 99 – Connate

I’ve always liked mysteries–not in the cozy/detective/murder sense (though I quite like those too), but in the grander sense. Though I’ve never been much of a sci-fi fanatic, I find the vastness and great unknowable nature of space very comforting. There is something huge and strange and incomprehensible out there, and that’s actually kind of nice.

Whenever I get bogged down in trivial problems, I think about how big things are. The Earth is much bigger than I give it credit for, and our solar system is even bigger than that. Our galaxy is bigger still, and that’s all wrapped up in infinitely larger units I don’t know the name of because it was very hard to stay awake in my astronomy classes, despite finding them interesting.

So when I think about my problems in that context–my problems, like how I can’t find the paperwork to get my wedding ring cleaned, not the broader societal problems that fill me with a constant state of dread–they feel a bit more manageable. My paperwork is somewhere in my house, not in the vast distances of space. I will find it. That’s comforting.

Maybe I should feel insignificant or tiny or inconsequential, but instead I just feel cozy, like a cat curled on a pillow. There’s so much out there that it’s easy to get swallowed up in the hugeness of it all, but instead I’ll focus on myself and the few things I can control.

Anyway, here’s a drabble.

CONNATE

(a.) From Latin connātus (to be born at the same time)

Innate, existing since birth; associated at birth; agreeing in nature; fused; congenitally conjoined, as in leaves; trapped in sediment.

Some things are born from wombs, some from stars, some from earth. Some are not born at all. Some wait. Some merely exist, their minds slow and sluggish as they grow and shift and twitch in caverns so deep they’ve never seen light, don’t even know what light is, their bodies crammed together so tight it’s hard to tell where one begins and another ends. They have no plan, no purpose, no past; more geological than biological, their bodes crush until crags form, until they are more gaps than solid. They slumber, stir, slumber, stir, waiting for the right time.