Asteroid in Blank Space

Contest Rules: Describe Setting #1 in words. Use all five senses and make your reader experience the setting as if he or she were there.

Upon first glance, if you can get past the fact that it was the size of a small moon, it appears to be a completely normal asteroid.  It slowly spins showing nooks, crannies, perfect mountains and valleys of rock.  Only a small debris field hangs around from whatever smashed into its surface, but if you watch carefully, you can see the smaller rocks and dust begin to move outwards from the asteroid, towards what may be the left and right… or is it to the top and bottom?   



This part of space makes you feel like you are standing at the curtain of reality and what lies beyond human comprehension.  No sun, no stars, no external light source.  No planets, no space clouds, nothing but the emptiness.  You can’t tell what’s up, what’s down, in or out.  It’s just Blank Space.  A large area between Solar Systems where it’s said nothing can exist for long.  A corridor between the systems.  That pause between the heartbeats of the universe.



And here this asteroid spinning eternally, like a yo-yo on the end of a string, balanced perfectly.  It’s existence makes no sense.  An impossibility. 



As the scar comes into view and we step foot upon its surface, the exposed flesh of the asteroid takes your breath away.  When I gazed upon it, it suddenly felt like had been walking upon the rough surface of its crumbled, dry mountains for days with no water. I leaned further over the edge and was staring into the marble of ice so clear I couldn’t help but want to chip off a piece and let it melt in my mouth. I could already taste the pureness of it as its coolness coated my tongue and throat. I ached for it to quench my thirst. 



Yet through all of this, my eyes were drawn unwillingly towards the ocean blue core where my heart seem to stop for just a moment.  But a moment out here in this area of space lasts an eternity.  The universe appears motionless.  There's nothing but the silence...  The darkness... And both were pressing in on me, threatening to swallow me whole… Then my heart finally started beating again and I could catch my breath.  There, frozen in the center of this entire asteroid were what seemed to be 3 large ink blots suspended within.  This is what we had come all this way for.