Galaxy owl over flower of life

The owl was bigger than any owl has a right to be. Her feathers were teal as a pond at dusk, and where the wind lifted them you could see sparks, pink and orange, like the inside of a kiln. Behind her, someone had drawn a great ring of overlapping circles across the sky, each one cutting through the next until the whole thing looked like a flower made of wheels. "That's where she keeps them," Mrs Hale said. "Every star she caught falling when the sky cracked open in the frost year."

Tom wanted to know why she kept them. His gran said the owl was the only one awake enough to gather what fell, and that she gave them back a few at a time to anyone who was up past their bedtime and needed a bit of light to find their way home. Tom held up his torch, which was dimmer than he'd hoped. The owl turned her head slowly, her eyes like two lamps left on in an empty house, and looked at him for a long moment.

In the morning Tom found a warm fleck of light caught in the lining of his coat pocket. It had dimmed to the colour of a coal, but when he pressed it between his finger and thumb it brightened, once, like something breathing.