Chapter Text
Everyone knows that the splendid shard of Shansa is microscopic and can only be seen through strong magnification, and, furthermore, that it is safely ensconced in the superb Shansan sponge in the Sea of Shansa, a puddle on the microplanet Sinead.
... and that's why I was so surprised when I was asked to help locate it. If it had gone missing, it was the best-kept secret in our particular universe, and in our particular universe, nothing is kept secret very well for very long. How could it be missing?
If you've ever seen the picture of Le Petit Prince standing on his asteroid, B-612, it won't be a stretch for you to imagine little Sinead, with her tiny ocean, the Sea of Shansa, in which you might, if you're on the petite side, moisten a toe or two, and the sea's lone sponge, no bigger than what you use to transfer germs from your cutting board to your cutlery but immense sitting proudly in its reef on that sea, effectively trapping the microscopic splendid shard, which, on the other hand, refuses to calcify itself into the reef's structure and instead sits just as proudly apart from the other effluvia the sponge has used as its construction materiél. "How would you even know if it vanished?" you ask, proving that your grade school history textbook was inadequate. It has vanished before, and trust me, everyone knew. It may not make its presence known in any direct manner, but its historical absence sent ripples throughout the universe.
The splendid shard of Shansa is sentient, and does not appreciate being pinned down under a bunch of stale old sponge and heaps of nasty bacteria. When it hasn't had its nap and is feeling especially blue, which it partially is, by the way, it calculates escape routes. When it has had its nap and is feeling especially energetic, it implements what it has calculated. There are no guarantees, of course; what there are, instead, are tides.
Then, one day, if day it was, for there were neon billboards shining down upon the reef, turning everyone's circadian rhythms to mush, the splendid shard of Shansa broke free of its confining little nook, landed on a long willow frond and was picked up by a Sineadean breeze, which carried the duo far enough to give it its own inertia, by which means it was propelled into space, across distances too vast to imagine and routes too twisted to reproduce, until it came floating down in the stratified atmosphere of the planet I seem unable to keep my hands off of: Earth.
Had there been any intentionality involved, other than the initial intention of the shard to escape, the now-frozen frond carrying the shard might have been incinerated immediately and there would be quite a different story to tell. As they had drifted through space, they gently drifted into Earth's atmosphere and down at last on a rock in the center of a much larger pond than the Sea of Shansa, whereupon the frond shattered but the splendid shard was unharmed.
No one bothered the shard for several years, and it drifted where it would, or rather where it was taken or sent by random breezes or waves or fish or other aquatic animals or the detritus and odd effluvia that finds its way into every corner of that planet.
While the unbothered splendid shard of Shansa was enjoying its freedom, the rest of the universe was immensely bothered. Storms squalled in formerly peaceful regions, floods muddied up whole deserts, one of Taspiria's smaller moons turned itself inside out and Pluto woke up and petitioned for reinstatement of its lost planethood, which status it had previous been unaware of losing. ("And we wish to be known henceforth as a 'little person planet,' not a 'dwarf planet," stipulated the offended celestial body.)
Back on Earth, where the shard didn't even bother to hide because most people don't carry electron microscopes in their pockets (and half the population regularly went pocketless anyway), pigs flew.
There was zero possibility anyone would ever find the splendid shard of Shansa. Anyone small enough to see it would be too small to know or care that the universe was askew for larger folks.
Fortunately for our universe, the splendid shard of Shansa became bored, and a bit nostalgic for its bacterial neighbors and stale apartment. It had seen as much as its perspective could take in of the vastness of the universe and, while unable to appreciate the havoc it had wreaked upon it, the shard at least understood that it existed and had dimensions and, within them, distance and even direction. Again, the exact route is incalculable, and I only know the foregoing thanks to conversations I've had with the splendid shard of Shansa, but somehow, that tiny chunk of splendor found its way back to Shansa, and to its previous place in the universe, which suddenly became a lot less turvey.