Work Text:
There are reasons comets diverge from their orbit – scientific, logical reasons they become lost. One of them must fit in this case.
They may have their gravitational arc warped by close contact with an even larger heavenly body such as a giant planet. Such force might be enough to divert or even eject a lump of cosmic ice and rock from the very solar system.
A comet may simply burn itself out, and be left a small dark rock unseeable by Earth.
It may break up from the gravitational pull at its closest pass, and disappear; a handful of pebbles in the night sky, dead, extinct.
These details once meant nothing to me. Now they take up their rightful residence in my lumber room, because now they mean everything to me.
Mycroft has either fallen afoul of a force with which he could not contend – and a list of such forces is exceedingly small and terrifying – or he has gone mad for no discernible reason and fled, or he is the victim of foul play. Only one of these things could divert him from his fixed orbit.
Those who do not understand my brother’s ways shrug and dismiss the anomaly – he has only been unaccountable for less than a day, after all.
But this lost comet has vanished with my Boswell.