"Ahhh, this is the life."
Ludo whispered to himself as he sat comfortably, smiling as he crouched beside the campfire, watching his pot noodles slowly simmer in the boiling water. It carried the perfect flavor of chicken into the air — a welcome assault to his senses. To Ludo, this was as close to perfection as it got.
This place was quite remote, with not a single sign of human civilisation for tens of miles in every direction. No roads, no phone or wifi signal. Nothing. Just endless wilderness. With his little campsite in the only empty patch of grass he could find in this dense forest — and nothing but the occasional whisper of the wind and chirping of birds to accompany him. Ludo felt right at home.
Work was hell, as usual. The endless deadlines that never ended up being met, pointless meetings that kept delaying those deadlines, and worst of all — his immature, nosy and far too invested in each other's personal lives. Ludo wasn't a fan of any of that, and so when his rare stretch of paid time off finally arrived, he did what he always did.
Vanish from society.
Straight off the grid, into the wild, far away from the suffocating drivel of city life and human activity.
Of course, he was alone, like usual. His lifelong search for a girlfriend bore no fruit, as always, leaving him to enjoy the wonders of nature all by himself.
But honestly? A part of Ludo secretly hoped that search never came to fruition. The joy of being single meant that he could do whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted, without having to consider a second opinion on any of it!
Some people might consider him a lonely guy for that, but he wasn't all that bothered. It seemed that in today's society, loneliness is treated like a curse — something to be feared above all else. And while to some extent that may be true, it wasn't for Ludo.
Being alone and being lonely were two very different things. He could understand why some people couldn't bare to be left to their own devices for as long as he had, but that just wasn't him.
Loneliness? That was for people who couldn't stand their own thoughts, who needed constant noise and outside validation to drown out the emptiness inside them. Ludo, on the other hand, enjoyed his own company just fine.
Even at work, he kept to himself. Just yesterday he had declined his coworker's umpteenth invitation to go drinking after hours. He still didn't get it, why did they keep asking him out when he rejected them every single time? Was subtlety lost on them? Did he just have to outright say, "Stop inviting me. I hate all of you and want nothing to do with you." Or was that still not enough for them?
If he could barely tolerate these people while getting paid, why on earth would he join them for free?
"Ptui!"
He spat near the fire in mild irritation, shaking his head.
'Hahh, lets just forget about them. Can't let the thought of those idiots spoil my time here.'
Glancing down at his noodles, he saw that they still weren't quite done. The wood he'd managed to find for the campfire didn't seem to work too well as fuel, taking it a while before the flame really got going. He leaned back with the head of his head resting on his hands and tilted his head toward the sky.
There it was.
The night sky stretched endlessly above him. Being tens of miles away from any other humans, there weren't any buildings or people around to pollute the skies with light. Right here was the best, most convenient spot for stargazing. The countless stars scattered like little dots across a black canvas made for quite a breathtaking scene.
Ludo couldn't help but smile in wonder every time he gazed up at it. The universe really could be beautiful sometimes.
"Yeah... this is worth it." He whispered.
Stargazing made up at least half the reason he trekked so far into the wilderness on his off days. There was just something so humbling about it. About realising how small you were beneath something so impossibly vast.
"Ohhh—!"
His eyes widened.
"A shooting star!"
And as if to make his night even better, a rare occurrence unfolded itself before his eyes.
A grin tugged at his lips as a bright streak of light cut across the darkness
'They say you should make a wish when you see a shooting star so…. I wish for a great fortune to fall upon me!' He thought playfully.
With that, he wouldn't have to suffer at his current corporate prison any longer... Oh, how he hoped and prayed that could happen.
But still, he wasn't naive. His luck was mediocre at best. The most he'd ever won was twenty bucks from a scratch card that cost half that. Although he followed the common practice of wishing upon a star, that was just harmless fun, a brief moment for him to return to childish whimsy under the open night sky.
But then…
"Hmm?"
Ludo frowned. He noticed something peculiar.
The streak of light hadn't yet faded.
Shooting stars were supposed to vanish instantly, right? A blink-and-you-miss-it event. Yet this one continued to burn brightly, carving a neat line across the heavens. More like the trail a plane left behind in its wake, only much, much brighter than that could ever be.
Intrigued, Ludo kept his eyes trained on the trailing light in the sky, his earlier surprise giving way to excitement and fascination.
He wasn't clueless (at least he thought so); he knew that what he was seeing now was likely a large enough meteoroid originating from outer space, burning up in the earth's atmosphere. This was also what shooting stars were most of the time, but the fact that this one's light still hadn't faded indicated that this one was bigger than usual — big enough that some fragments might survive the fall.
'Too bad it'll probably land a few hundred miles away.' He thought, sighing. 'No chance I'll ever find it.'
However, his facial expression quickly washed away as shock took over, barely able to believe what he had just seen.
"I-it turned!" He scrambled to his feet, nearly kicking over the pot of now overcooked, boiling noodles. "What the hell?!"
It wasn't falling straight anymore. The neat, straight line cutting across the sky quickly made a sharp turn.
This couldn't possibly be a meteor! They don't do that, and to his admittedly limited knowledge, nothing that obeyed the laws of physics did either! To turn like that at the kind of speeds it should be moving would destroy even the most durable materials on Earth.
The light screamed across the sky, leaving a long, burning trail in its wake. A high-pitched hum began to vibrate in the air — starting low at first, then rising fast, even rattling his teeth the brighter it got!
The fire at his feet flickered violently, flattened by a sudden rush of wind.
Ludo's mind went blank.
"Oh sh—"
He never had the chance to finish his sentence.
The night erupted. A deafening roar tore through the surrounding tens of miles, even alerting some livestock and wild animals awake from their slumber. What followed was a blinding flash that seemed to turn everything pure white.
The ground trembled, with the air seemingly vanishing, turning the surroundings into a vacuum.
For a moment, Ludo felt weightless, like all of his senses had been drowned out. Was he dead?
He thought he saw something in the light, but it was far too fast for his mind to comprehend.
Then he blacked out.