The stars glint above like great eyes winking down on the broad field, spreading for miles below. I sit on the dewy grass with my face tilted upward and my arms protectively cradling my baby sister, Lucy, who is cooing and pointing at the heavenly lights. "Star," she chortles, lisping the word with effort, and then clapping her palms together in excitement.

"Star, yes," I say with an approving smile, taking her tiny hand and pointing it at a different constellation. "Endless stars." My comment makes me feel suddenly melancholy as I recall my mother, who had been killed so many years ago in starship crash just outside the perimeter of the Milky Way. There had been no details in the printed letter we had then received days later, just a short, brusque notice of her death. Our father had left soon afterward, leaving us alone on the secluded planet of Lebith. Not that it is unsafe, of course- there are few, if any dangers, lurking in the verdant woods and valleys and mountain springs. But to this day I hope that someday Father will return, and life will be normal again. I can live like other girls again.

My sister tugs unexpectedly at my messy auburn braid. "Beverlee," she squeals, "see the stars!"

"I see the stars, Lucy," I say softly, holding her close and giving her coppery head a pensive, motherly kiss. "And I think about them every day- more than you will ever know."





The next morning dawns fresh and clear with not a cloud in the azure blue sky. I rise and go to the window, pressing the single button to withdraw the automated shades. As Lucy is not awake yet, I climb the few stairs to enter the kitchen of the small, three-bedroom cabin, situated in the midst of one of Lebith's many secluded valleys. I soon find myself singing an merry tune as I prepare breakfast; and I am surprised to find that all traces of last night's despondency have gone.

After the meal I strap Lucy onto my back in a baby carrier and head down the worn earthen path to the schoolhouse. It is less than a mile from our cabin- and old-fashioned structure made of brick and metal, perhaps dating back to the early 2000's. Already I can hear the shrill peal of the electronic bell calling over the hills and peaks on either side of the crude path, and it fills me with a queer melding of both dread and eagerness.

I am greeted by my friends the moment I step through the sliding steel doors of the building, though those friends are few and far between. Shoshana, Bonnie, and Elsa give exclamations of delight as they see me approaching, and accordingly run to meet me. "Aww, you have Lucy today," cries Elsa, lifting my baby sister from her carrier before I can either approve or deny her action. "She's so adorable! I wish more people brought their younger siblings to school. It would make it more fun, at any rate!"

"You wouldn't say that if you heard my brother screaming last week over the meteor shower," Bonnie interjects with a wry laugh.

"That was something, wasn't it?" Shoshana enthuses, black eyes sparkling, as we turn and begin to walk down the passage to our tenth-grade classroom. "I've never seen anything like it- and I've seen quite a few meteor showers in my day!"

I glance away awkwardly, not speaking a word as they continue to ramble on and on about the celestial phenomenon. I do not want to admit to my friends that it had actually frightened me. Any disturbance in the cosmos has, really, since my mother's death and my father's departure. I am never comfortable unless everything is normal.

"Beverlee, are you sick today?" Elsa asks in a gentle tone, noticing my atypical silence.

"No," I answer, shortly. "Let's just stop talking and get to class. We don't want to be late like usual," and at that point we all take off sprinting, for those words usually have a marvellous effect. We arrive in the doorway of the classroom mere seconds before another grating peal reverberates through the entire building, and I breathe some gratitude for for once being saved by the bell- literally.

~ One week later ~


"Oh, Beverlee. Why don't you just stop being so spooked by the meteor shower? Goodness' sake, it happened over two weeks ago. Why on earth did it frighten you so?"

I had decided to confide my private fears to Elsa, for she is my most intimate friend of my circle, the most trustworthy and the sweetest of all the girls. Now I wish I hadn't, for her reaction is not at all what I expected nor desired. "I just can't stop thinking about it," I confess quietly, staring down at my clasped hands. "It brings back... bad memories."

"Of your mother?" she asks, her tone abruptly softening.

I nod. "Yes."

"Beverlee... you weren't even there the day she died. Why would you associate a thing like this with that?"

"I don't know." I shrug, feeling exceedingly foolish. "But trust me, it isn't something I want to do. It's just what I do naturally, like an instinct." I struggle with how to explain my complicated emotions to my friend, who at the moment seems to be completely disconnected. "Listen, I've got to be getting home soon. I don't like to leave Steve with Lucy for long- sometimes he's terribly clumsy," I say, scowling as I jump up from the ground of Elsa's spacious, wooded backyard.

"Who's Steve?" she demands blankly.

"Oh, he graduated from the secondary school in Davenport two years ago; he's four years older than us. He's been watching Lucy for years since..." I pause just short of conjuring more nightmarish images, and scuff my toe defiantly in the muddy soil. "For a long time," I correct myself in a clipped tone.

Elsa frowns, then shakes her frosty blonde head. "Well, have a good day," she calls as I push open the gate and begin running across the fields toward my own house.




"STEVE!" I explode in dismay. "How in the world did you manage to make such a mess?!" I had paused in the front door of the cottage and had been greeted by a sitting room full of smoke, detectors screaming incessantly, and Steve sitting calmly on the maroon rug with a howling Lucy in his lap. "Is the house on fire?" I yell, running into the kitchen and discovering the source of the mayhem- the smoldering ruins of a chicken in the sink.

"Sorry about that, Beverlee," Steve calls nonchalantly. "I just got distracted checking the notifications on my cell phone. Says there's going to be major weather tonight. I'll probably want to get home early, before the storm hits."

"What- kind of storm?" I demand, exiting the kitchen once more with eyes teary from smoke and hands on my hips.

Steve shrugs and makes a feeble attempt to soothe a still-hysterical Lucy. "Nothing majorly destructive. Why do you look so white? It's nothing to be panicked over," he says, a little derisively.

"Oh no?" I counter. My temper is flying high tonight and my patience running perilously low.

Steve senses this and jumps to his feet. "I think that's my cue to leave," he laughs, heading for the door and leaving Lucy to crawl about unattended on the floor. I scoop her up just before she reaches the electric socket, preparing to insert her fingers, and I give an indignant shout after Steve. "Tomorrow, try not to burn the house down, okay?"

"Oooh, prickly as thorns!" as he makes for the porch steps.

"Don't make me come after you with this frying pan!" I yell, feeling my anger cool and subside into laughter at my own theatrics. Perhaps I did overreact about the burnt dinner and Steve's occasional indolence. But it seems I have more important things to think about than meals and smoke and such, with a storm looming imminent on the horizon. I apprehensively walk into the kitchen to begin preparing dinner, tying an apron loosely round my waist.

"Beverlee... cloud," squeals Lucy. "Big, bright cloud."

I sigh irritably. "It's been cloudy all day, Lucy."

"Bright cloud!" she repeats, loudly and vehemently, over and over until I finally slam the dishes together and stalk into the living room just to keep her quiet so I can concentrate. But great is my surprise when I find myself facing a window full of blinding reddish light, a single cloud haloed in illumination. The light is so fierce it makes me cover my eyes with an instinctive exclamation.

Instantly a forgotten memory rushes across my brain, plunging my vision in darkness. The fire cloud...