It was still a young planet, as planets count these things, but the world that thought of itself as Halla was already tired. Recently born of a cataclysmic stellar demise, it was steadily being devoured by its sole remaining parent sun. A few million years left and that was all. It wasn't fair!

A gas giant of no mean mass itself, Halla had begun its fight for survival by drawing in as much free matter as it could, and there was quite a bit to draw from, the residue of an exploding star. Comets and asteroid belts and even small moons had fed its appetite over the eons, and now it sported a small satellite system of its own, but even so Halla could never achieve parity with its oppressor. It was just too big.

But the young planet stood steadfast. It refused to surrender.

After a time, Halla's attention, which had been fixed only on its own battle, was drawn to a curious phenomenon on one of its moons. Against all the odds, life had formed — primitive, true, but nonetheless real.

At first, Halla's reaction was of petulant ire. There was no time to waste on such trivialities; its life was ending! Callously, it decided to rid its moon of these parasites. After all, dying is indignity enough, and dying before one’s time is worse still; why tolerate freeloaders? And so it bombarded its satellite with a burst of deadly radiation drawn from deep within its core.

At first, the new growth withered under the onslaught, and Halla exulted in its small victory. But then the unexpected happened: The life survived, and it changed. It fought extinction stubbornly, clinging tenaciously to sheltered spots until it could endure the sleeting particles. It adapted, and then it began to spread once again.

The struggling world considered this for a while, slightly envious and, in spite of itself, a little impressed. Then, an idea: Perhaps its new children could aid in the great war against the sun, if only they received enough encouragement. Halla pulled several small comets in to strike the moon, and they brought with them water and an atmosphere. The primitive life throve under the new conditions, multiplying even in the fierce light of the unrelenting sun, the new vapors providing a thin yet potent shield from its radiation. Slowly, painfully, it evolved.

It was nearly a million years and several false starts later when the small moon's new primary life form achieved what for creatures on that scale could be called "intelligence", though of course they could hardly be aware of the fond thoughts and now gentle care of their parent planet. Their lives were firefly flickers, the tiniest sparks compared to Halla. And yet they cheered it with their optimistic flame as they began to develop cities.

It was from Halla's perspective mere moments later that the new life left its cradle and took its first faltering steps into the universe. Between the rapacious appetite of the all-devouring sun and Halla's earlier efforts, the inner system had been swept clean and the outer retained few resources. Nevertheless, the works of the tiny people were mighty, even heroic when one considered the scale of their own battle with their home star. They constructed vast matter funnels and mined the photosphere itself, and in so doing managed to stave off destruction for millennia.

Yet their efforts, valiant though they were, had been doomed from the outset. There was too little matter available, and far too little time. One by one the solar stations were pulled in and consumed, and soon the bloated star began drawing in the atmosphere of the little moon along with Halla's own substance.

Yet even as hope often blooms in the darkest moments before the dawn, so too it was with Halla. As the planet shuddered in the throes of its final battle, it saw its children fleeing in tiny worlds of their own construction, some to the outer edges of the system and then beyond.

As Halla itself succumbed to the sun that had given it birth, it watched with satisfaction while its progeny escaped to find new lives and new homes among the stars.

This was immortality of a sort, and Halla died content in its victory.

* * *

NOTE: Thanks to Mike Dunn for the challenge and Becky Ferreira of the New York Times for the inspiration.