Tech mogul Arman builds a comet for a marriage proposal. He hires engineers to launch a payload of ice and reflective dust, guided by thrusters, timed to streak over the city spelling "Marry Me" in radiant debris. Environmentalists protest; astronomers scoff. The launch proceeds. The artificial comet arcs beautifully, then veers. Its tail thickens, altering upper-atmosphere winds. Tides shift subtly. Birds migrate off-course. The proposal is accepted, livestreamed, trending. Later, scientists notice ocean currents wobble. The comet's trail has seeded the sky with particles cooling some regions and warming others.
Weather patterns skew. Arman funds mitigation, wracked with guilt. His fiancee, Mira, suggests using comet remnants to repair. They work with meteorologists to disperse particles evenly using drones. Over months, the sky settles. Arman testifies before a global council about hubris. His story becomes cautionary curriculum. Meanwhile, comet fragments fall, sparkling at night like regret. Children collect pieces on beaches, calling them "wish rocks." Arman and Mira keep one on their mantle. It glows faintly, a reminder that grand gestures can bend the world and that fixing it takes quieter work. On their anniversary, they skip fireworks and plant trees instead, each sapling watered with melted comet ice, turning spectacle into shade.
Years on, the trees grow tall, leaves catching fragments of light. Couples propose beneath them, joking about "safe comets." Arman and Mira start a fund for mundane proposals: good dinners, sincere conversations, rings made by local jewelers. The fund is small but busy. Arman likes writing checks for restaurant reservations more than paying for atmospheric cleanup. The sky holds a faint glitter forever, a permanent reminder that even love stories should consider the weather.
On their tenth anniversary, they visit the launch site, now overgrown with dune grass. Arman buries a handwritten apology there, more for himself than for the planet. Mira plants another sapling beside it. They leave without fireworks, content with the quiet streak of a falling star that arrives on its own schedule.