“Look at it. Look at it and breathe and forget.”

So I do. The Embassy sits alone in the dark. The Crown rises from the center and other towers peak around it. Lights shine between the gaps of buildings and in the rows of windows. I can reach out and hold the city in my palm.

I shiver again, suddenly terrified. My whole life I’ve been contained to one city on one planet, but Ladia has flown through the stars. Does she still crave to discover worlds beyond her own? Does she have this sense of her size in the world? For the first time, I realize what I truly am: a piece of it.

Somehow, that’s a good thing to know. Inside those lights lives a separate world than the one I’ve always known, and I suddenly know there’s so much more to see. Belvun, Daliona, Narviid, the Perihelid asteroid field…

And beyond.

“Look up,” Glacia says.

And I do. I look at the Kairos supernova again. It’s a sun that does not warm my skin. Everywhere else, hundreds—no, thousands of dots twinkle in the sky, silent and beautiful. A clumpy stretch of gas rises from the southeast: the Milky Way. Gazing at it sends a third shiver up my spine. My muscles relax, and I take a long, easy breath. I smile—actually smile. A sense of pride floods my head. Not pride for myself, but for what surrounds me.

“Know any constellations?” Glacia asks.

“No,” I say without really thinking.

She points at five stars that form a cross high in the east. “That’s Cygnus the Swan”—she points to a line of stars that curves near the horizon—“and that’s Serpia.”

She slowly turns, her eyes reading the stars, and faces southwest.

“Etymus the Scroll”—she lifts her arm straight up—“and Arcen the Bow. Over there is Canis Major.” Now she points at the Milky Way. “Look to the right of that dark patch. You see the star in the center of that square?”

I focus on where she points. When I move my eyes away slightly, a tiny speck appears.

“Yeah.”

“Do you know what star that is?”

I rack my thoughts but can’t think of any names. I never paid much attention to this kind of stuff.

“No. What is it?”

“Sol.”

I nod as if I know the name. “Oh, okay.”

“You don’t know it, do you?” she says, obviously not convinced.

“Nope, sorry.”

“It’s where Earth was.”

That catches my attention. “You’re serious?”

She scoffs. “Duh I’m serious!” She pokes my arm. “I can’t believe you, of all people, didn’t know.”

“If it wasn’t on the Placement Report, I probably didn’t learn it.”