A Room Without Stars
Mira loved the stars more than anything in the whole world. On warm evenings she would press her nose to the window and search the sky for the very first twinkle. But Mira’s bedroom window faced a tall brick wall, grey and plain, and from her cosy bed she could not see a single star at all.
“I wish I could see the stars from here,” she sighed one night, pulling her knees up under her chin. “I wish I could fall asleep with the whole sky shining over me.”
She gazed at the dull grey bricks and felt her heart go quiet and small. How lovely it would be, she thought, to drift off to sleep beneath a sky full of light — instead of a plain old wall.
The Box of Paper
Just then, Mira spotted something on her shelf that she had quite forgotten about — an old box, tied with string. She lifted the lid, and inside she found sheets and sheets of beautiful golden paper that shimmered in the lamplight. A wonderful idea sparkled to life in her mind.
“If I can’t reach the stars,” she said, sitting up tall, “then I shall simply make my own!”
She fetched her little scissors and got straight to work at her table. Snip, snip, snip — fold, fold, fold. Her tongue poked out in concentration. And after a moment, she held up her very first paper star, turning it this way and that so it caught the warm glow of the lamp.
It was perfect.
A Sky of Her Own
So Mira made another star, and then another. She made small stars and large stars, fat stars and pointy stars, until a whole drift of them lay scattered across her table like spilled gold.
Then she found a spool of fine thread and, ever so carefully, she hung each star from her ceiling, one by one. She tied them high and low, near and far, until the air above her bed was filled with floating golden stars. It took a long, long time, and her arms grew tired from reaching up — but Mira did not mind one bit.
At last, when the very last star was hung, she climbed into bed, reached over, and switched off her little lamp. And in the dark, something quite magical began to happen.
The Stars Begin to Glow
One by one, in the soft darkness, the paper stars began to shimmer. A gentle golden light woke inside each one, faint at first, then warmer and brighter, until the whole ceiling glowed like a sky full of real, twinkling stars. Mira sat straight up in bed, her eyes wide with wonder.
“Oh!” she gasped.
She climbed up onto her pillows and reached toward them, and the little stars swayed and sparkled above her fingertips, casting soft golden light across her happy face. She spun about beneath them, laughing, while the whole room glittered like the inside of a treasure chest. She had made a sky — her very own sky — and it shone just for her.
Under Her Own Sky
When at last her happy spinning slowed and a great sleepy yawn crept up on her, Mira snuggled down deep beneath her cosy blanket. Above her, the golden paper stars glowed soft and warm, swaying gently in the still night air. The plain grey wall outside was quite forgotten now.
“Goodnight, little stars,”
Mira whispered, gazing up at the sky she had made with her own two hands. And it seemed to her that the stars twinkled back, brighter for a moment, as if to say goodnight in return. Wrapped in their gentle golden glow, safe and snug and wonderfully sleepy, Mira closed her eyes — and drifted off beneath her very own sky, dreaming the brightest dreams of all.