Mira twisted the brass knob until the telescope steadied on a patch of black sky. She pressed her eye to the lens, but the stars were just scattered pinpricks — not the patterns she expected. 'Where are the pictures?' she murmured, her finger tracing the cold metal rim. This moment pushed her to keep searching.
She dragged a stack of yellowed star charts from under her bed and pinned them to the wall. Using a piece of white chalk, she connected the dots on paper, then looked back through the telescope. The real sky refused to match her drawings.
Her shoulders slumped, and she kicked a loose tile on the floor. The real sky still wouldn't match her drawings — not tonight, not ever. She stared at the ceiling and wondered if the constellations were hiding on purpose.
Mira opened a heavy book titled Constellations of Old and read a passage about Orion the Hunter. She tried to find the hunter in the night sky, but the stars remained stubbornly ordinary.
She closed the book, its cover thumping against her knee. The silence in the room felt heavier. Outside, the stars blinked mockingly, indifferent to all her efforts.
Instead of looking out, Mira sat on the rug, wrapped her arms around her knees, and shut her eyes tight. She listened to the distant hum of a moth hitting the windowpane.
She felt the rough weave of the rug beneath her palms and let her mind drift. Suddenly, a crystal dragon swam into her thoughts — not from any book, but from her own imagination.
Her breath caught, and the telescope lens shimmered with a pale silver light. The dragon turned its head and looked right at her — as if it had always been waiting.
Mira leaped up and grabbed a blank page from her sketchbook. She quickly drew the dragon, then held it up to the telescope — the drawn lines seemed to glow against the real stars.
She placed the drawing on her pillow and whispered, 'I made you.' The house settled into a quiet night.
Mira's dreams were full of shapes only she could see — dragons made of starlight, rivers of silver, and constellations that moved like fish through dark water.
Outside, the brass telescope pointed upward once more, and somewhere above the rooftops, new patterns began to form in the dark.