I couldn’t believe it until I saw it with my own eyes.

Looking out the window of my bedroom, there it was, high in the sky. A huge world floating near Earth right up there.

“Scientists are baffled as to how it got there,” the radio spoke, “But it seems it’s too close to Earth to do anything about it.”

Apparently a planet had suddenly appeared near Earth. It already absorbed the moon, and was slowly closing in on our home world. Gravity should feel strange for the next few hours.

I stepped away from my window and stretched, before leaving my room to go downstairs.

This is the end of the world, isn’t it? Well, it’s a lot better than what I had thought would happen.

It’d be a tragedy for our world to end by human means, whether it’d be some kind of war or overly polluted skies. It seems fitting for our world to end by means of something… Greater than ourselves.

Stepping on the cold hard floor downstairs, I looked around and saw my mom staring out the back window at the sky.

“It’s pretty,” she said. She didn’t seem worried at all, almost as if she’d already completely accepted this fate as I have.

There was a melancholy in the air despite this. Earth may no longer exist within the next few hours.

I thought for a moment. We should really find a way to appreciate our last moments on Earth, rather than stay stuck inside waiting for the inevitable.

I thought long and hard at what we'd even do at a time like this, when suddenly I thought of something brilliant.

“Let’s go to the lake,” I suggested.

We lived near a lake that my mom used to take me to all the time as a kid. We’d have lunch there, find toads and frogs near the water, and look at the fish swimming about.

This time, we’ll watch the skies.

After a moment, my mom stepped away from the window and started walking towards the front door.

I looked around for my shoes, but couldn’t seem to find them.

“We don’t need shoes, let’s just go.” She said. That’s right, it doesn’t really matter at a time like this, especially when we have so little of time.

She opened the front door, and stepped outside, and I followed right after.

It was windy, and the sky was much dimmer than usual due to the planet floating high above. At it’s distance from us, we couldn’t really make out any specific details of what it looked like other than that it’s quite huge.

We walked out to the driveway in silence. Looking around, we saw others standing about staring at the sky, not one word being spoken among them.

As we approached our car, I noticed birds nearby seemingly flying in circles. I guess this event really throws them off in a weird way.

We entered the car and started it up, pulling out of the driveway and proceeding to drive down the street. Our destination, the lake.

This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

I spent a lot of my childhood at that lake, and I’ll spend the end of the world there, too. The world ends where it began, so to speak.

“So, how’s the end of the world going for you?” I jokingly asked my mom.

She stared out the windshield for a moment before responding.

“Just like any other day, just with an extra planet in the sky,” she joked back.

We could still joke at a time like this, and I found that in itself kind of funny.

Despite my acceptance of this fate, I felt anxious. I wasn’t really ready to die, and I felt like maybe my mom wasn’t either.

No one on Planet Earth expected something like this to happen, or could even have detected something like this either, I mean, the mysterious planet seemed to have come out of nowhere.

We kept driving forward, and we weren’t far from the lake.

After a few moments of silent driving, we suddenly felt something.

It felt as though the world itself shook for a moment, and the sky outside looked a bit different.

Luckily for us, we were close to the lake, so mom stepped on the gas and sped us through some grass off the side of the road, stopping us right next to the lake.

It was never far from home, only a few minutes of driving, but it felt like a lot longer during this particular drive.

As soon as we opened the doors and stepped out, we saw it, the true beauty of this whole thing.

Above us was a sky lit deep blue, with glimmering particles shining and flashing high above. The planet was completely visible now.

We quickly walked towards the lake while admiring the sky.

High above us was a large blue gas giant, with streaks of purple flowing through like obsidian rivers on a blue world.

We could feel the difference in gravity at this point, with the planet above getting closer and pulling us more.

It would only be a matter of time before the Earth begins to fall into the planet above.

My mom and I sat at the beach of this lake, noticing the surface of the water reflecting the terrifying beauty above.

I remembered times where I’d look at the reflection of the stars or the clouds on the lake’s surface, wondering how that was even possible.

As beautiful as this was, a part of me was terrified and devastated.

This is the world I grew up on, the world I made friends on, the world where all of my best and worst memories were made.

This is the home of mankind, and all of the amazing and awful things humans have done, all on this one single world.

It seemed like right now, the whole world, all the humans, all the animals, and all the plants, were unified, staring in awe at our fate floating before our eyes.

I felt my face begin to frown as tears formed in my eyes. I didn’t want to go, I didn’t want my friends and family to go.

I looked at my mom and she seemed to be tearing up as well.

We felt the ground start to shake and the planet above get larger and larger. The sky started slowly glowing brighter and brighter orange, as the air around us grew warmer. This is it.

I hugged my mom.

“It’s been an awesome life.” I told her.

We felt the world heat up as it collided with the planet above.

We understood the beauty and fear in the end.