I was never an object that attracted attention.

My surface swallowed light. I possessed no magnificent tail, no shining metals, no mountains large enough to cast shadows across a world.

I was dark stone.

And I travelled.

Three billion years passed with very little to distinguish one revolution from another.

An impact took part of my upper ridge.

Another opened a crater across my broadest face.

Smaller fragments struck and departed, leaving scars so shallow that only time made them numerous.

Nothing about me was remarkable.

Then I approached the great white-gold star.

Its surface moved with a violence concealed by distance. Bright regions rose and dissolved. Darker places formed among them. Vast magnetic structures curved beyond its edge.

The star filled more of the sky.

Its radiation warmed the hemisphere facing it.

My opposite face remained dark.

I continued along my orbit.

And then, for a brief interval, I crossed something I could neither touch nor see.

A line.

Light travelled outward from the star towards a distant observer.

I passed through its path.

For that observer, part of the star disappeared.

Not because the star had changed.

Not because I had extinguished anything.

I simply occupied the space through which some of its light would otherwise have travelled.

My ancient silhouette crossed the brilliant surface.

The ridge that had survived a billion collisions became a jagged darkness.

The old crater altered my outline.

The missing section of my upper edge revealed a narrow piece of stellar brilliance.

Every wound I had carried acquired a shape against the light.

For the first time, my darkness was easier to measure than my stone.

Far away, instruments recorded the interruption.

Perhaps someone examined the unfamiliar outline and wondered what ancient object had crossed their star.

Perhaps they calculated my dimensions.

Perhaps they gave me a name.

I continued moving.

Slowly, the brilliant surface reappeared from behind my uneven edge...