“I eased back on my elbows, tilting my head back to look up at the sky, which was pinkish, streaked with red. This was the time we knew best, that stretch of day going from dusk to dark. It seemed like we were always waiting for nighttime here. I could feel the trampoline easing up and down, moved by our own breathing, bringing us in small increments up and back from the sky as the colors faded, slowly, and the stars began to show themselves.”

“Remember with your heart. Go back, go back and go back. The skies of this world were always meant to have dragons. When they are not here, humans miss them. Some never think of them, of course. But some children, from the time they are small, they look up at the blue summer sky and watch for something that never comes. Because they know. Something that was supposed to be there faded and vanished. Something that we must bring back, you and I.”

“Just as I lay back, she sat up. I sat up, and she flopped back down. Awkward. That was my every move when it came to her. Now we were both lying down, staring up at the blue sky.”

“Yes,” I said, looking back up as the sun settled into the sky, the red blooming from it like flower petals. “It has already begun.”

“You could feel the war getting ready in the sky that night. The way the clouds moved aside and came back, and the way the stars looked, a million of the swimming between the clouds, like the enemy disks, and the feeling that the sky might fall upon the city and turn it to chalk dust, and the moon go up in red fire; that was how the night felt.”

“Look at that, Vera.”I tilt my head back and see a sky full of stars.“Can you tell which one is me?” he asks.I point to the brightest one.”