High above the clouds, Nuru lived in the Station of Soft Signals, a glass-domed home that floated like a bubble in the velvet night.

Her grandfather, Elder Orion, was the Keeper of the Sky; together, they spent their evenings catching messages that drifted down from the stars like glowing autumn leaves.

Beside them flitted Blink, a fuzzy moth-cat with antennae that pulsed like soft neon hearts.

Tonight, a heavy silence fell as a brilliant blue envelope tumbled from the rafters and landed in Nuru’s lap.

It wasn’t warm like the others; it was shivering so violently that it rattled her teeth, shedding tiny frost-flakes shaped like musical notes that crunched like sugar on the floor.