🏮 Lumi and the Sky Lantern

Lumi loved the night.

Not because of bedtime stories,

though those were nice.

Not because of crickets,

though they sang like tiny musicians.

Lumi loved the night because of the sky.

When everything else was quiet,

the sky stayed awake.

It glittered.

It whispered.

It made Lumi feel small and big at the same time.

One evening, the moon was round and bright,

and thousands of stars dotted the dark like lanterns.

Lumi pressed a hand to the window glass.

"I wonder what's up there," whispered Lumi.

A thought appeared, small but certain:

What if I could send a message to the moon?

The next morning Lumi took a notebook, crayons, and a jar.

On the first page went a picture of a smiling moon,

a sky filled with shining stars,

and a little figure waving up at them.

Below, in careful letters:

"Hello, Moon.

I look at you every night.

Do you see me?"

The drawing was folded and tucked inside the jar,

and the lid closed tight.

But how to send it?

How could something as small as a jar

reach something as far away as the moon?

Aya was the first to see Lumi walking down the street with the jar.

"What's that?" Aya asked.

"A message for the moon," said Lumi.

"How will you send it?"

"I don't know yet."

Aya's eyes lit up.

"Then we'll figure it out."

They went to find Leo,

who was in the yard tinkering with a wheel.

"Leo," Aya said, "we need help with something big."

Leo's curls bounced as he looked up.

"What kind of big?"

"A way to send a message to the moon."

"The moon?" His grin grew wide.

"Oh, that's BIG-big. I need my notebook!"

The three of them decided to start with what they knew.

They went to the library and pulled books from high shelves,

pages full of rockets, stars, planets, and moons.

They learned that the moon is so far away

it takes days for a rocket to get there.

Stars are even farther,

so far it's almost impossible to imagine.

Lumi touched the glass of a picture

that showed Earth floating like a blue marble.

"How do astronauts do it?"

"They ride in a rocket," Leo explained.

"They go really, really fast."

"And when they land," Aya added,

"they bounce around because there's less gravity there.

It pulls less strongly than on Earth."

Lumi imagined floating like that.

It looked like a dream.

The first idea came easily: a kite.

"If the wind can lift it," Aya suggested,

"maybe it can carry the jar all the way up."

They built the biggest paper kite they could manage,

painted it silver like the moon,

and tied the jar to the string.

The kite soared high,

the jar bumping and swaying.

But when the wind stopped,

the kite tumbled down—

plop!

right into a bush.

The jar was safe,

but still very much on Earth.

The second try was balloons.

They blew up so many balloons

that Leo's cheeks turned red.

One by one, they tied the strings to the jar.

Up it went,

wobbling and spinning,

rising higher than the rooftops.

For a moment it looked like it might make it to the clouds.

But then a gust of wind blew the balloons sideways,

and the jar drifted down into a tree.

Aya groaned,

"Not high enough."

Leo climbed up to rescue it.

That night, tired but not ready to give up,

they lay on the grass and stared at the sky.

Aya had brought a small telescope.

"Maybe we can't send the jar," she said,

"but at least we can see the moon up close."

Lumi peered through the telescope.

The moon filled the circle of glass:

silver and pale, covered in craters.

Lumi gasped softly.

Leo peeked through next.

"It looks like cheese! Moon cheese!"

They laughed.

Even though the jar was still on the ground,

the moon felt closer.

A soft "meow" interrupted them.

It was Pebble, the tiny gray kitten.

Pebble padded over, tapped the jar with a paw,

then curled up next to Lumi.

Aya giggled.

"I think Pebble likes the moon too."

The kitten purred until everyone was smiling.

The next morning, as Pebble dozed,

Lumi sat with the jar, thinking hard.

"If the jar can't go up," whispered Lumi,

"maybe something else can.

Something that floats like a star."

And the idea appeared as suddenly as the moon appears in the evening sky:

a lantern.

A big, glowing lantern that could float

and carry the message up into the night.

They spent the day building it.

Leo helped make a frame with light sticks and string.

Aya cut smooth paper panels,

and Lumi painted moons and stars on the outside.

Instead of a candle, they used a glowing stick

so the lantern would be bright but safe.

The glow made the painted stars shine.

Finally, Lumi placed the jar inside.

When everything was ready, they waited for night.

The moon was full that night,

bright enough to turn the whole park silver.

They carried the lantern to an open space.

The air was still,

as if the whole world was waiting.

Leo held the frame,

Aya activated the glow stick and tucked it inside,

and Lumi held on tight.

As the air inside warmed and the lantern filled,

it began to rise.

Slowly at first,

then higher,

soft and glowing like a star.

Up, up it floated,

above the trees,

above the rooftops,

out into the deep velvet sky.

The jar inside shimmered.

"Go, go," Leo whispered.

"Take our message with you!"

They ran across the grass,

cheering as the lantern rose higher.

People opened their windows.

"What's that?" someone called.

Aya waved up at them.

"A lantern for the moon!"

Soon the lantern was just a dot,

hard to tell apart from the real stars.

Lumi stood still,

watching until the very last glimmer disappeared.

"Do you think the moon will see it?"

Aya nodded.

"I think the moon notices everything.

You just have to try."

The next morning,

they found the lantern had come back down in the park,

its glow stick dim but still safe.

Inside, the jar was perfectly fine.

"It came back," Leo said.

"That means the moon saw it," Aya said,

"and sent it back so we can try again."

Lumi smiled.

Even if the jar hadn't made it to the stars,

the message had.

That evening, Lumi opened the notebook again.

On a new page, there were words:

"Dear Moon,

Thank you for watching us.

We learned that you are far away,

the stars even farther,

but whenever we look up,

it feels like you are right here."

The page went back into the jar,

and the jar went on the windowsill.

The moon rose slowly,

big and bright.

And if anyone had been looking closely,

they might have seen a faint shimmer from the jar

shining right back.

That night, Lumi dreamed of floating through the sky,

past clouds and birds,

past the blue of Earth

into the silver glow of the moon.

And the moon smiled.

🏮