Space sleeve with nebula and planets

The comet came over the top of the pines on Tuesday, a long fire dragging its tail across the sky, and Mrs Pryce's boy ran up the lane shouting that the world was ending. Your father said it was only the same stone the sailors wrote about, and went back to mending the hen house. I stood on the back step with the milk pan in my hands until my fingers went numb, because the tail was orange at the root and then went gold and faded to a blue no paint could match.

The moon was low over Hallows Wood that night, pocked and grey as a bad tooth, and the lights at Burrow farm were out below it. Ellen Cade swears the blue star beside the moon is a planet with weather on it, clouds going round like cream in tea. I told her she had been reading too many penny magazines. She only laughed and said she would hold me to it when we both have the time to look properly through her father's glass.

Come home at harvest if you can. The rail works will manage a week without you, and the wood keeps its own hours. Bring the good lamp oil. I want to watch the comet go again while it is still near enough to see the wheat burn under it.

Your loving sister, Margaret