The sight of the stars from her bedroom window were an unexpected source of wonder for Lilith Jones.
They"d always been there, of course, but the telescope she"d been bought for her thirteenth birthday had opened up new worlds: landscapes and possibilities that had drifted overhead her entire life without her knowing. The moon had been her first fascination, its craters and seas starkly clear as they drifted past her eyepiece, the edges of the moon wavering and burning with the turbulence of the Earth"s intervening atmosphere. The dead world looked alive to her: she imagined cities and civilisations up there, people of wisdom far-removed from those she spent her days among on the Earth.
She wasn"t supposed to use the telescope during the week, on school nights, but if the sky was clear
