“Lost Travelers from Earth and Space”
The tektites started out as rocks here on Earth, all sleeping peacefully together under miles of thick ice, deep in the cold, cold winter.
All at once they were shocked awake by a rude, unforgiving visitor who tore through the ice and threw them all the way into space, with big buckets of steamy hot water to awaken them.
The rocks woke up to see the Earth slowly rotating beneath them. They all wondered at once, “what just happened?!?” They were disoriented, their sleepy minds clouded with wonder and the thrill of seeing daylight. They were warm and awake, so they shook hands and said hello to each other.
Half a day passed as Earth moved slowly underneath, the rocks chilled off again and wondered where they were going. While in space, they turned from rocks to glass, and started new lives. They felt free, with plenty of space to breathe.
Finally they fell back down on the other side of Earth, spread out all across the land and the sea. “Where are we now?” they continued to wonder. They had become lost, very far from home. But they were glass now, grown up and transformed into their new lives.
Three quarters of a million years passed while they became buried in the dirt or deep beneath the oceans in the sea floor ooze, in darkness with the worms. They went to sleep again and dreamed of the view they had seen from space. Earth looked very beautiful from up above.
Suddenly, people began to find the glass rocks and pull them from the ground and from the floor of the sea. A new day started for them as excited scientists collected them and gave them a name. The glass rocks shook hands with each other again, finally reunited. They were now called “tektites”, and they were magic and valuable.
They had a special story to tell about the amazing view of Earth from space. Earth is a beautiful planet and they had seen more of it than any human could ever imagine. The scientists wanted to know the story and tell it to other people, but the tektites kept their story secret for a hundred years.
Finally, enough tektites had been collected together that they all shook hands and agreed to tell their story. Their long travel from Earth, through space, and back to Earth again became a popular tale of hope and patience and transformation. The tektites sighed with relief because their secret was finally told.
The tektites were together again, and they were very happy to see each other.
-T.H.S. Harris
20 July 2018