Thora ponders his words as she reaches the first gap in the stairs. Why not risk your life for curiosity? For her, it’s a question that has never needed an answer. She jumps across, a thrill running from her scalp to the tips of her toes. As she climbs higher and the gaps get wider, she hunts for hand- and footholds in the wall, using the holes in the brickwork as stepping stones to take her higher. Before long, she’s absorbed. The party, the terrible first impression she made on Santi, her fear of stepping onto the wrong path, all fall away. Now, the only path is vertical, and it leads her to the top of the tower, chasing the shrouded stars. She doesn’t think about the drop, not even when the gaps in the wall show her night sky veiled with wisps of cloud. The wind whistles through, flicking her hair over her eyes. When her feet find the steps again, she turns to watch Santi climb across after her. It’s much scarier to watch than it is to do. Music rises on the air: a melody whose source she’s not sure of until she sees Santi’s lips moving.

“Are you singing?” she says in disbelief.

He leaps to the other edge of the gap, dusting off his hands. “Yeah.” He continues past her, up the final twist of the spiral. Thora thinks about what it means: he’s not afraid. Not of falling, not of making a wrong choice. For a moment, her envy of him is absolute.

She follows him up through a hatch onto a wooden platform. Arches on three sides give onto views of the city. On the fourth side is the back of the clock, gears clogged with rust. Heated by the climb, Thora unwinds her scarf and hangs it on a rusty nail. At the edge, she sits down and tilts her head back. Cleared of the city lights, stars spray across the sky like blood-splatter from a god’s violent death. “Isn’t it weird how reality sometimes looks unrealistic?” she muses. “That shouldn’t be possible. I mean, what are we comparing it to?”

“Something more real that we can’t remember,” Santi says, sitting down beside her. He follows her gaze upward. “When I was a kid, I used to think the stars were holes in the wall between us and heaven.”

Thora smiles. “I thought they were stuck on the inside of the sky. Like the glow-in-the-dark ones I had on my bedroom ceiling.”

“I had those too!” Santi grins. “Did you bring yours here?”